


a secret between us and the ground

by hellgym



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Baby Teddy Lupin, Cats, F/F, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Healer Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy Friendship, M/M, Slow Burn, Teacher Harry, The Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter) is Terrible, Trauma, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellgym/pseuds/hellgym
Summary: Harry emerges from isolation at the end of summer after the Battle of Hogwarts and decides that he will postpone Auror training to complete his 8th year. A prophecy foretells another infant chosen one. An old house burns. And a boy who has betrayed everyone tells Harry this;In true Gryffindor form, you are determined to keep making the same mistakes over again for the rest of your life. But you don't have to. In fact, I won't let you.





	1. Chapter 1

The night is still and quiet when Harry shows up at Luna’s 17-and-a-halfth birthday party.

Harry stands, listless, shifting his weight from foot to foot on the Lovegood’s front doorstep as the dirigible plums glow in the night air. His eyes linger on a great scorched crack in the side of the house, just over the door. A scar from the death eater attack, still unmended.

He’s in more than just his pants and a ratty t-shirt for the first time in almost a week, in a dark green sweater which Hermione had chosen and the comfiest pair of jeans he owns that are at least semi-presentable.

The door creaks open, and light spills from within. A whiff of herbs and some fruit Harry can't quite place takes him back to his last time he was there, to the pungent, oversteeped tea Xenophilius poured with shaking hands before the death eaters came, and the animal panic in his eyes.

Harry feels dread set deep in his stomach. He swallows. Tries to tell himself, it’s over, you daft idiot. It ended and it's over.

“Harry? Is that you? It’s been a quite a while,” comes a slow, dreamy voice.

Once his eyes adjust, Harry finds himself looking down at Luna Lovegood in all her eccentric glory. Great, glossy black and purple feathers dangle from her ears and dust the top of a kaleidoscopic quilt dress that could charitably be described as unique.

“Happy birthday, Luna. Half-birthday. Sorry I’m late.”

“I don’t mind, Harry. That color looks rather nice on you, by the way. You look like a rather healthy mandrake.”

“Er, thanks?” Harry’s ears are hot, that old familiar I-shouldn’t-be-here-wasting-time-when-there’s-a-war-on feeling starting to burn in him. Like a phantom limb that won’t go away. Harry opts for an obvious question, the quickest path inside. He’s spent too much time standing on doorsteps, sweating. “Are Ron and Hermione here yet?”

“They got here a few minutes ago,” Luna says, stepping into the warm yellow glow. “Please, come in.”

Harry follows her in, taking in the crowded room. There are familiar faces and new ones — Neville ambles around, fingers brushing the tiny blunt spines of the aloes and succulents Luna has potted in little pink and green ceramics. A girl Harry doesn’t know with silver braids sits on the carpet, laughing with her arm around another girl who keeps her shy dark eyes low, and Lavender and Parvati are whispering into one another’s ear by a table laden with pink pastries.

Cho stands by the window, alone with her arms crossed over her chest and a steaming cup of black tea in one hand. She waves at Harry with her free hand, shoots Luna a little smile, and leans against the counter as if to say _I’ll be here_.

“I’m rather pleased at the turnout,” Luna says with a slow, almost shy smile that lights up her eyes.

“Yeah,” is all he can say as he scans the crowd, feeling a great sense of relief. The room does not smell how it did then — this is a house Luna lives in, once more. Harry smells fresh paint on the walls from the blue rabbits layered over the previous paint job and something buttery and sweet in the oven.

In truth, he hadn’t kept in touch with Luna - or anyone but Ron and Hermione, for that matter - after the end of the war. He was shocked when the owl came with the invitation, penned in eggshell, a page of Luna’s distinctive, loopy handwriting.

 _17 and a half-th_ , she wrote, _because the gurdyroots are coming along beautifully in the garden, shooting red winding sprouts above the soil, and I’m rather sick of pretending to be happy in the winter. Besides, it’s said that wrackspurts bestow good luck upon those who celebrate the halves of things._

“Oi! Harry!” says a voice, and suddenly there’s a heavy arm slung around his shoulders and Ron’s comforting grassy smell. “Saved a tart for you. Like animals, this lot.”

“I’m sure you had nothing to do with it, Ron.”

“‘Course not,” Ron says. “It was all Neville.”

“Lies,” calls a voice from across the room. Harry looks to see Hermione walking their way. "You're late," she says in a mock disapproving tone, but her smile turns earnest. "I'm glad you came, Harry."

"Yeah. Me too," Harry says, and he means it.

The next hour goes smoothly, more or less. Harry takes great pains to feign interest in Neville's latest area of herbological inquiry, plants that briefly and disastrously alter the shape of internal organs _juust_ enough for things get really messy. He tries to act surprised when Seamus announces his plans to go into magical pyrotechnics.

Then, Harry accidentally sits beside Cho on a bench in the garden when he steps out for a little breath of warm summer air, perfumed with something spicy and floral from some bulbous, lantern-like deep plum flowers.

Neither of them talk about Cedric but he knows they are both thinking about Cedric. She asks if he's coming back to Hogwarts, he says, I don't know. Harry feels a small tenuous burning pride that his throat does not close up this time, he can breathe more or less.

He can even smile just a little bit when Cho lays a hand on his arm — short nails, painted some dark chipping color — and quickly retracts it.

The moment is strange. Something inside Harry, some ghost of his fifth year self maybe, expects something. A flash of light. A feeling of warmth in his stomach. He has been lonely.

It has been the loneliest summer yet, even free of the Dursleys and living with his best mates. It’s because _he_ changed. Harry cannot bring himself to start Auror training, though the Ministry letters assure him they will take him without N.E.W.T.S.

But Harry has grown sullen and scared. And he is running out of excuses.

It isn’t just flashes of memory, faces in green light, distant screams. His trauma is written in the body. The scars on his hands— _I must not tell lies._  The way he takes food to his room to eat, remembering, seven years later, Dudley’s pink grasping hands. The long walks outside Grimmauld’s place at four in the am and the sudden shakes and the long periods without eating, without drinking, without bathing, without sleeping.

And - lonely or not, afraid or not - there is nothing. The touch kindles nothing in him. Cho is beautiful. The freckles on her nose and spattered over her cheeks and chin are the same as they were when he kissed her. But he is not the same Harry as the boy reflected, kaleidoscopic, in the room of requirement. And Cho isn't either. She holds her shoulders with a stubbornness that is new to Harry. She does not lean toward him. Her eyes are sharp, and she looks strong. Stronger than he feels.

Harry goes back inside. Grabs a drink. On his way, he runs into Ginny on the stairs, talking and laughing with a teammate from the Harpies, and at once everything he’s been avoiding rushes back. Ginny snorts when her friend, a tall girl in a muggle tracksuit, cracks a joke, and Harry aches with missing her. He misses her sense of humor and fierce independence. He misses the way the two of them could fill silences easily and laugh easily and how they competed over every little thing.

The feeling makes his intestines coil into a great big knot.

Harry waves hello tentatively, almost mechanically, when their eyes meet.

Ginny smiles back at him. It comes easy on her face, maybe because she’s drunk, he doesn’t know. She’s cut her hair short, close to her scalp. It makes it a little easier, that she looks different. Ginny pulls him aside and they chat about Ron’s lingering obsession with Victor Krum and the next Harpies Game, the proclivities of the players Ginny will be facing the next week. The conversations flows naturally. He walks away grinning.

Feeling warm, at ease, and a just a little buzzed after a swig or three of firewhiskey, Harry grabs a few of Xenophilius’s fig and beet danishes and sinks into an huge patchwork couch. He’s vaguely aware he should find Ron and Hermione, but he isn’t their child after all, no matter what they seem to think.  He’s allowed to sit alone on a couch and to walk around unchaperoned. Harry takes a big bite of the danish. 

That’s when he sees him. A few feet away on an identical couch, Luna sits, butterbeer in hand. Lounging next to her, arm draped along the back of the couch, is Draco Malfoy.

His hair’s, well, cut kind of oddly. Harry thinks with some alarm that he must have done it himself, or asked Luna to do it maybe, or got his pointy head caught in some kind of machine. Malfoy’s swallowed in a white button up shirt that must be at least two sizes too big, and he holds a wine glass half-filled with some sort of indeterminate clear liquid and Luna and Malfoy are engrossed in their conversation. They don’t notice him sit, so Harry just gawks.

The two are close, speaking quietly enough he can’t make out their conversation.

Luna says something, and Malfoy’s face cracks into a grin. The expression is so alien to those cold, sharp features that for a moment, Harry wonders if he has a long-lost twin — the good one to Malfoy’s evil.

Then, without warning, Malfoy turns his head and catches Harry dead in the eye.

There is a pause. As if he expects something. Then Malfoy’s nose wrinkles. “What’s wrong with you, Potter?”

“I— I didn’t expect to see you here,” Harry says.

“Nor I _you_ ,” he drawls, and Harry is hit with a rush that feels like vertigo and leaves him immediately, acutely nostalgiac and irritated. “Last I heard, you were playing the hermit, hiding away from the world’s problems in your little flat with Granger and Weasley. Never to emerge.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Good to see some things don’t change. “Sod off, Malfoy,” he says.

Luna looks between them. “We haven’t had a chance to talk yet, the three of us,” she says. “This is lovely.”

“Not exactly the word I’d use.” Harry crosses his arms, scowling. He forgot how this git winds him up just by breathing.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “I’m not judging you, Potter,” he says, and shrugs nonchalantly.

But not nonchalantly enough. It sloshes some of the liquid in his glass onto his white shirt. Malfoy doesn't notice or pretends not to. “Well, perhaps a little bit. Were I you, I might do the same, but I don’t exactly have the luxury. The Prophet’s going mad with you gone. They’ve lost their favorite target. Now they have to find someone else’s privacy to invade. Fucking vultures.” Malfoy takes another sip of his drink, lip curled.

“They’ve been rather horrible… ” Luna says. Her earrings flutter and release little puffs of charmed glitter when she shakes her head. “A man from the Prophet came to talk to my father about buying the rights to the Quibbler to make it a column in the paper. People lost faith in the Prophet, you know, during the war. They wanted to buy it back. But my father told them to bugger off.”

“Psh. Malfoy only cares because they run more articles on his family now.” Harry decides that talking _around_ Malfoy is what will really get under his skin. He is not sure what he’s said is true, but it seems like it should be.

Harry hasn’t had the energy nor the fortitude to unroll the Prophet since the Battle, more or less. The times he has, it's like Ron’s bloody radio. Body counts out of context, never anything meaningful, never an attempt at any solution. It's depressing. Maddening.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “I welcome any exposure of my family’s war crimes.” He waves his hand, lips curling. “But the press only ever cared about the tragic wife, the poor mislead boy, the descent of a Respected Pureblood Family into Dark Magic. Who _ever_ could have predicted such a thing?”

Malfoy shakes his head, as Luna laughs, as if this is a reference to something they’ve spoken about privately. His eyes catch the glow of the string lights hung around the window. It makes him look manic. “They never really gave a shit about what we were _doing_ —that whole genocide plot, it's not sexy, it doesn’t sell. All the politicians are doing it, I hear. But Potter... Potter's news whether or not he shows himself to the public.”

“I’m not —” Harry sighs. Through his teeth. He realizes Malfoy has turned it back around on him. He’s speaking to Luna while looking at Harry. “What do you care, anyway?” he says, sounding like he’s thirteen again.

“I don’t, really.” Malfoy shrugs, examining the pristine nails on the stem of the glass. “I’m just sick of it. If I have to see ‘Harry Potter: the Boy Who Hid’ once more as a headline, I will scream. Thank Merlin for the Quibbler.”

Harry snorts. A low blow, poking fun at Luna in her own home. How quintessentially Slytherin. “Didn’t mummy ever teach you to be nice to the host?”

“Once again, you wound me. I’ll have you know I _adore_ the Quibbler.”

Harry snorts again, _Merlin, has his voice always been this bloody smug?_ He keeps his hand away from his wand. With great effort. “Yeah? I’m sure you read it every morning with your tea.” He rolls his eyes. “Name one article.”

Malfoy shoots him a venomous look. Harry notices a new glint when he moves his head— Malfoy’s left ear is pierced through with a thin silver ring. “That editorial on the mating cycle of waffle-skinned gingrisks? Fascinating stuff. I’m certain _you_ wouldn’t know.”

Harry starts to laugh, glad to have put Malfoy in his place, when Luna smiles again.

“I’m glad you liked it. I thought that one was interesting, too.”

 

* * *

 

Thirty minutes later, they’re cross-legged on the floor, playing exploding snap. Harry hasn’t seen Ron or Hermione in a while. He doesn’t know how long.

Neville and Dean joined in a few hands ago. Neville is behind Luna in last place, though he seems happy just to be playing. Luna’s concentration is elsewhere. Cho sits just behind her, leaning on her a little bit, absorbed in some book with a red cover that the two of them are talking about in soft tones below the cries and yelps of the rest of them.

Dean’s competing with Malfoy at the top.

Dean is definitely a better player than Malfoy, but there’s no way Harry should be losing to this blonde prat - not fairly, at least.

Malfoy is cheating, and Harry’s not about to let him get away with it. Sure, he hasn’t actually caught him yet, but he knows. Malfoy seems to be the only sober person in the game, which is suspect enough, or perhaps he is really just that uptight. Whatever it is, Harry watches his hands closely, determined to be the one to catch him.

Malfoy plays with ferocious silent concentration. But when he gets a little too cocky, he lapses into trash talk, and then Dean, ever perceptive, gets a one-over on him.

But it is Harry’s turn to fuck up. He’s too busy watching and analyzing and trying to make sense of what the hell is going on. The cards explode in Harry’s face. The room reeks with alcohol and drying paint and burnt hair.

Malfoy sneers. “Having difficulties, Potter?”

Again, Harry barely stops himself from hexing him.

Dean wins the match, thank Merlin. Malfoy puts on a show of quiet dignity, but it’s clear his pride is bruised.

Harry gets up. He’s satisfied just to see a dent in Malfoy’s ego, if a bit bitter he wasn’t the one to put it there. But he can’t stay to gloat because all of a sudden he really, desperately needs to piss.

Harry roams the hallways, praying somehow he’ll stumble into the Lovegood’s bathroom, and when he rounds a corner, he almost collides into Ginny and the girl from earlier, the Harpy, snogging against the wall.

Ginny jerks back. Her hair is tangled. Her face is so red it blends with her hair and obliterates her freckles.

“Harry! I- uh,” she starts to say.

Harry says, “Oh.”

“Shit,” is all she seems to be able to say. The girl starts to laugh into her fist, a low pleasant rough laugh. She is unfazed by Harry’s gawking.

“Oh,” he says again, and starts to laugh. Holy shit, alright. It's okay, it doesn't hurt, they've been broken up for months now, and anyway, those months felt like years.

The situation is awkward and surreal and embarrassing, but Harry is drunk and giddy, glad just to be out of his flat, acting like some semblance of a normal human with normal human friends who do normal human things for the first time what seems like in ages.

Harry also feels a strange sort of relief, that he hasn’t broken her heart. Though that’s maybe an arrogant assumption if he stops to think about it. He had no idea that Ginny was… but what does it matter if they failed at being in love because of this, or on their own terms?

Harry thinks of their fumbling stiff kisses and Ginny’s sudden panicked looks when the topic of anything _more_ floated to Harry’s lips, and it makes sense. Of course. Holy shit.

“No- Fuck, I’m sorry,” he says, still shaking with laughter. “Really fucking sorry, Gin. Er, I’m just gonna, go now, thanks.”

Ginny and the Harpy girl look at him like he’s lost his mind.

 _Have fun,_ he almost says, but smacks himself, and stumbles into the bathroom.

They’re gone when he comes out, which is good and fine, and he’s alright, and happy.

 

* * *

 

Harry blinks and the windows are pitch dark. Dots of yellow light drift in the void, little torchbugs weaving through the Lovegood’s garden.

Most of the people left are too comfortable or too drunk to apparate home.

Dean’s still playing exploding snap, now one-on-one with Neville. Seamus is not playing but he leans with his arm slung across Dean’s narrow back, trying Dean’s concentration. Harry sees his mouth move from across the room, watches those sooty cheeks wrinkle into a smile as Dean doubles over laughing and his cards spill from his hand and onto the blue painted wood floor.

Neville’s winning the match, and a troll could play better than him. But Seamus and Dean are knackered, as is Harry.

He thinks Ron and Hermione are snogging somewhere as they are wont to do now and again when they decide to stop being Harry’s caregivers, or maybe they have gone home. Everything’s taken on a soft, fuzzy edge. He feels exceptionally warm. No anxiety, no guilt.

Well, maybe a little guilt. He can’t stop thinking about Malfoy. It’s not like sixth year, not really. He just needs to figure him out. Why the fuck is here? What’s his angle?

Harry hadn’t thought much about Malfoy since Narcissa wrote him, in her delicate spidery hand, to ask him to speak at their trial. Harry went all the way to the ministry, feeling duty-bound to the woman who saved him, trying desperately to cultivate a feeling of Reconciliation and Second Chances.

He walked halfway down that black gleaming brick hall before feeling sick to his stomach. Harry ducked into the first bathroom he could find and hid in the stall. He pressed his face against his knees on the toilet and thought of Hermione’s arm splayed out and her back pressed against the marble tile of the manor as Bellatrix's knife made butter of her skin. And of Lucius, and the sock, and the shallow sandy grave by the sea. Harry thought of Draco. Venomous and terrified. A heel applied against the cartilage of his nose, and the sharp bloom of pain.

And Harry went back into the Floo and left.

He heard Arthur talking about the outcome, the next morning. Lucius went back to his _imperio_ excuse, and when that lost traction, he tried to argue that he was coerced into it by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, under pain of death, and that he cared deeply for society, and had funneled millions of galleons into philanthropy. Narcissa’s trial was shorter. She recanted, and offered the Ministry names.

Life in Azkaban, for Lucius. House arrest for Narcissa. A handsome fine the Malfoys could pay for by selling maybe one or two of their silver dining sets.

And nothing, not a single charge for Draco Malfoy.

He turned against his father, Arthur said, blowing a curtain of steam off his tea. Draco brought documents. Scrolls, parchments, stacks of papers. Unearthed fromhis father’s study, signed with his father’s name. His mother thought they were part of his defense. But Draco mounted no defense of his own.

You would not have believed the look on her face, Arthur told him. Narcissa went white as a sheet, her hands started to shake, and she could no longer look at her son.

It worked well for the two of them in the end. Lucius was the one they really wanted, anyway. Narcissa and Draco, they could be rehabilitated.

And now, in the free world, with his father at the mercy of dementors — a thought that gives Harry some spiteful satisfaction, and a great deal more confusion —  Malfoy is pouring through vinyls with Luna.

Hermione told him a while back that she had gotten into muggle music, even got a record player and started going to shops in the closest muggle town.

And apparently, Malfoy goes with her.

“Fuck the Beatles,” he’s saying, waggling a cardboard square in the air. “I can’t believe you spent honest-to-Merlin galleons on this thing, Luna, really. I should have been there to stop you.”

“I can't say that you're wrong, Draco, but… I do still think _I Want to Hold Your Hand_ is really quite sweet.”

“Yes, focus-group approved. The empty saccharine pandering of capitalism. Insidious.” Malfoy tosses it on the floor. “Now this,” he says, thumping his first finger down on the spine of one still in the red plastic crate, “is music.” He sighs. “Aretha. No one like her.”

Luna laughs. She pulls another one up, low enough Harry can’t make out the cover even when he squints lopsidedly.

“Oh Luna. How could you show me this.”

“I know that it’s your favorite and that you’re too afraid to admit it, so I do love to taunt you with it.”

“Always so cruel. You’re a delight.”

Harry squints to catches a glimpse of the title from the shifting blur if the world, it’s almost certainly the soundtrack to _Mama Mia._ Or maybe Harry just wants it to be that. Either way, Malfoy shoves it back down into the cardboard box.

Harry feels like he's is in a fugue state.

The two of them continue to leaf through records and seem to be getting no closer to actually choosing. At some point, Malfoy says, “Luna, when _will_ you let me shave your head,” to which she replies, “Leo isn’t in Sagittarius quite yet,” and Malfoy rolls his eyes.

“Wotcher, Harry?”

He jumps a little when Ron sits beside him — a delayed reaction. Ron has not gone home, Harry realizes slowly. His veins are slow with alcohol and confusion and some unplaceable feeling.

“Malfoy and Luna are friends now,” Harry says, stupidly.

“I can see that, mate.” Ron shakes his head. He says, like remarking on the weather, “Seems fucked, f’you ask me.”

 

* * *

 

 At some point Harry gets tired of consciousness and having to puzzle through two hundred feelings at once. He gives in to the warmth and the alcohol-blur and he passes out on a pillow somewhere on the ground.

He dreams.

Of Sirius, this time. Harry watches as his godfather trudges up an unending set of stairs, flanked on either side by the trophies, the heads of house elves, and the painted scowls of dead vicious Black relatives.

Sirius is not alone in that house. Teddy Lupin, not yet one, and black-eyed, sits at the top of the stairs. The crown of his head is lit in a patch of dust-thick sunlight.

He claps his chubby hands 1-2, 1-2 as the lips of the house elves move together. _Cur-sed houses, cur-sed houses_ — !

And Teddy laughs.

Harry wakes up panting. His forehead is wet and cold. It is very, very early morning.

He staggers to his feet to see the room flooded with pale hesitant light and bodies asleep beside one another, Cho curled up on the purple loveseat, Ron drooling on Hermione’s shoulder, Parvati by Lavender, Dean’s head on Seamus’s left thigh, his hand curled around his shin — 

Malfoy, awake, returns Harry’s gaze.

Half of his face is bathed in pale light from the little round window window to the east. His back is rigid straight against the wall beside the slumped form of Luna, cocooned in a knit blanket at his side. His arms are wrapped tight around his chest.

Malfoy’s grey eyes follow Harry’s movement. They are alert but not sharp. They are worn. Exhausted. Afraid.

Harry has seen these same eyes, staring down at him at the manor as Malfoy stammered, _I don’t know, I couldn’t say for sure_.

Harry feels as if he should say something but he doesn’t know why or how or what. He doesn’t know what he already said in his sleep — _You mutter sometimes_ , Ron had told him once, the morning after a bad one about Cedric, and he insisted on making Harry a big egg and sausage breakfast and treated Harry as if he were terminally ill the rest of the day. 

There are no hints on Malfoy’s pointy drawn face or the translucent blue-purple skin below his eyes.

Harry realizes this is what he wants, this is why he’s being so stupid — he wants an answer. Why didn't he sleep last night, why is he friends with Luna, why did he turn again his father, and how has he wormed his way back into Harry’s life, and who gave him the right to do it?

Malfoy owes him this much. Surely.

They stare at one another. Harry’s head is fuzzy, unclear, pounding with the harbinger of a hangover, but his nerves hum. Harry feels for a second like he’s back in that restroom in sixth year.

His body responds, it readies itself to duck a hex.

But this time is different. Draco’s lips curl when he catches Harry’s hand inching toward his wand. Harry stops, lowers his hand, lets it hang at his side.

They’ve caught one another in a moment of vulnerability — again — and Harry doesn’t know what to do.

In the end, he settles for what he wishes he had done in sixth year. He turns. Walks away.

Malfoy lets him go without a word and Harry doesn’t look back.

Harry heads, ironically, to the bathroom. He grips the side of the sink and washes the sweat off his face and sits on the toilet and stays there skimming through _Unlikely Gnome Toe Uses_ , a book he’s sure Xenophilius left beside the loo until he hears Hermione’s voice and knows someone else is awake.

They leave before breakfast at Harry’s urging and Hermione asks no questions, Ron offers no forced levity, and they drink hangover potions in the easy silence of family.

They are satisfied by his effort, at least. At least, for one night, he was enough.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“I want to go back with you. To Hogwarts.” Harry blurts this out over a bowl of cereal in the grey ever-dusty dining room of Grimmauld place. It is a cool morning for the end of August. Flames lick gently at a log in the open fireplace and illuminate the dust that never seems to go away, floating thick in the air.

Harry feels out of it this morning. His thoughts jump like sparks from one thing to the next. But he prefers this sort of feeling to the great sluggish weight he gets sometimes inside his bones, that makes him too heavy even to think. He has been like this, near manic since the party. He has also been thinking about Hogwarts since the party.

Hermione’s eyebrows flick up. Harry knows she’s been waiting for him to say it. It’s been her fallback all summer, whenever Harry proclaimed with great fanfare as he came out of a depressive episode that, finally, tomorrow, he would go to the Auror office and the next day didn’t make it out of bed. She thinks closure would be Good For Him, that he might be able to process Certain Things there.

 _You don’t have to commit right now_ , she would tell him. _You can take more time, Harry. You can have one more year._

But Ron’s spoon droops on the way to his mouth. “You what? Are you mad? Harry,” he said, brows pinched, “Harry. If I could skip my NEWTS to get into Auror training, I’d be in the ministry begging for a job right now.”

“Maybe Harry just needs a bit of time, Ron,” Hermione says in her soft, chastising, Remember Harry is Traumatized voice that Harry hates (and is also grateful for).

“I need to be ready, you know, I need to know, er, more things. Before I’m in the field.”

The “field” has become a bogart in Harry’s head these days. It used to seem exciting. Now in his head it smells of the leaf rot and moss of the Great Forest, the day he gave himself over to Voldemort, of the salt and death reek in the cave where he poured poison down the throat of Albus Dumbledore, the cold, mildew, blood-and-wine of the manor dining room, swarmed with dark hooded figures, the spell-petrichor in that cold room in the ministry, when Sirius died.

“And besides,” Harry says, when he can feel the dread starting to leech through to his face and knows Ron and Hermione are a few seconds from shifting into walking-on-eggshells-mode. “It wouldn’t be fair if I skipped them and you couldn’t. I mean, we were in that bloody tent together, we held the horcrux around our necks. All of us. What’s the difference, a scar?”

“I don’t know, you’re Harry Bloody Potter,” Ron says, at the same time Hermione ventures, only half-joking, “You… you died for us?”

The good morning cheer is back in their voices. They are more comfortable with angsty frustrated Harry than listless passive far-away Harry. He knows they love him and they worry for him but it makes him feel like they expect him to crack at any given moment and Harry worries about that enough for the whole household.

“Anyway I just—I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. I miss Hogwarts, even after, after everything. It was nice seeing everyone,at the party. I — missed them.”

Hermione gives Harry a knowing smile that vaguely alarms him. Harry isn’t sure what exactly she thinks she knows about. “Well, Cho’s coming back to Hogwarts... And Dean, and Luna, and... well, a lot of people.”

Except Neville, who Harry knows has an apprenticeship with Auberginea Adiga, the renowned herbologist, and Ginny, who’s already started with the Harpies over the summer. This is the reason she gave for breaking up with him, the distance and her schedule. Harry hadn’t believed that this was the real reason even before he saw her… snogging a girl. Which he is definitely coping with.

Hermione goes to the sink to wash her bowl, trailing her hand across Ron’s shoulders as she goes. “I saw you talking to her, you know, through the window,” Hermione says, over the faucet and the rasp of the scrubby on plastic. She could have used magic, but something about the house makes it feel weird.

In the first weeks of summer, they gutted the place. Even more than the Order had before. Not just the cursed things — the old things, the ugly things, everything about it that proclaimed Pureblood. A task force of the trio and the Weasley family took down all the head-plaques and the screaming paintings and anything bearing the Black family name. Andromeda came, wearing black, to help.Her eyes were tired and red-ringed. Harry was afraid to talk to her, to hear the hollowness of loss in her voice. But Andromeda was not frail, nor sentimental. She took the portraits out back, stacked them up, and burned them, the whole lot howling, “MUGGLE LOVER! A DISGRACE ON THE GOOD NAME OF BLACK! TRAITOR TO YOUR SISTERS AND YOUR BLOOD!” until they were finally ash.

“Who?” Harry says, lost in the memory, his eyes on the fireplace. He can see her face. Drawn. Hard. Lit from below by the fire. Half-distorted by curtains of smoke. So very like her sisters. So very like Bellatrix, bathed in green light, after the spell that killed his Godfather.

Hermione gives him an odd look. “Cho. Harry, you don’t remember?”

Ron whistles a little. “Had a little too much, eh, mate?”

“I remember,” Harry says, a little defensively. He stirs little pieces of brightly colored o’s around with his spoon. A thought flits in his head. He has had it before, showing up when he least expects it, since he saw old ferret-face at the Lovegoods. _Will Malfoy come back to Hogwarts?_ He finds himself morbidly hopeful. This would give him the opportunity Harry needs, to find out if he has been switched with a polyjuice doppelganger, if he has been benignly _imperio_ ’d, or simply hit very badly on the head. But he cannot express these thoughts to Ron or Hermione, because they are mad, and by extension, they prove that Harry is mad. “I talked to a lot of people,” he says, feeling his face heat.

“All I meant to say, Harry, is that it’ll be good, to come back. You can get out of this… this house and - and sort out for yourself what you want.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, looking down at the pieces of cereal spinning and colliding and growing soggy and bloated in the milk. “Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

Summer ends.

Harry stuffs his old suitcase full of his old ratty clothes, wizard and muggle, worn in places, full of holes, some of them mended by Hermione and others by Ron, after Hermione thrust her needle and thread at him and told him, _you do it_. They are wadded carelessly and thrown in with trinkets and odds and ends. A box of Bernie Bott’s and three chocolate frogs he hadn’t the energy to unwrap. The Marauder’s Map. A pair of dirty grey trainers. The shard of Aberforth’s mirror, tucked into a hoodie.Harry still has Hedwig’s cage in the corner of the makeshift bedroom and he starts to pick it up before realizing. It falls from his hand with a clatter.

“Alright, Harry?” Ron shouts from the bathroom, through a mouthful of toothpaste.

“M’fine, Mum,” he says back.

They floo to the station and harry watches the hazy grey light and the bare wall they unearthed below yards and yards of Black family tapestry warp and twist in on itself as the green flames envelop the three of them and he thinks, _thank Merlin I’m getting out of here_.

They go to the station. Harry trails behind Ron and Hermione, his arms full with a broomstick and a suitcase and a bag of books they picked up at Diagon. It feels weird, a little jarring to be back, doing this, like he was eleven again. People stop in the street when they catch sight of his scar. Their mouths hang open. They cannot speak. When he was young, it had felt so exhilarating. To go from the Dursleys, where he was always cooking but forbidden to eat, always shouted at but forbidden to speak, to the light and color of Diagon Alley,  the safety of Hagrid’s great shadow, the witches and wizards grasping for his hand. _Mr. Potter! Good god, it’s Harry Potter!_

Now it makes him queasy. He keeps his head low and his eyes on the cobblestones, still glittering with little tiny shards of glass in the crevices.

They meet Molly and Arthur in the muggle part of King’s Cross, here to send off their son one last time. Molly plants a firm wet kiss on all their cheeks — Ron, Hermione, Harry — and squeezes Harry’s arms so hard it hurts. Her eyes are watery. “My dears, my big grown up children…” She produces a handkerchief, hand embroidered, MW — sniffs jaw twitching — “Do me one favor and promise me. You’ll be safe. All of you. Okay? Will you promise me that?”

Hermione nods, books clutched tight to her chest, but Ron is fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Harry can see the effort. “I promise, Mum.”

Arthur’s eyes are shining, too, and his nose is red like Molly’s. “I didn’t think we’d be back here, you know. It’s funny, how things work out.” His voice is small, choked up.

Ginny and George stand at their side. Harry studiously avoids both of their gazes. Since Fred’s funeral, he hasn’t been able to say much to George — how could he say anything? For a month after, George was sullen, nearly mute. When he did speak, he spoke in fragments, spaces he expected Fred to fill. Then something clicked. One visit to the burrow he was silent and the next, pestering Ron, composing limericks, setting booby traps in the kitchen with Ginny after she got back from quidditch practice.

Harry thought, if George - who had lost half of himself - could find that click, what was wrong with Harry? Why couldn't he?

“You’d best be a good boy, Ronald,” George says, and comes forward to squeeze Ron’s shoulder. “For mummy. Pr’aps you’ll even make Prefect again next year, after you fail your NEWT’s.”

“Georgie.” Molly says, with a warning glare. Suddenly her voice is hard and sharp.

“As if you have room to talk,” says Ginny, rolling her eyes. “Drop-out.”

“Dumb jock.”

“Horrid ugly earless older brother.”

“Children,” Arthur sighs.

They pass through the pillar and into Platform 9 and ¾. Harry finds himself distracted, scanning  the crowd, without meaning to, for a pointy blonde head. He does not find it. They board the train.

The ride is long. They sit in a compartment together, the three of them and Crookshanks, in a cat carrier. Like old times. But, thankfully, he thinks, no Scabbers.

Harry fiddles with the seat divider and stares out at the window, only half-involved in the conversation. Hermione and Ron are talking about what Hogwarts will look like. The rebuilding efforts. If the houses will be the same. If the eighth-years will be in houses.

“They have to get rid of Slytherin, at least,” Hermione says. “I mean, it’s named after a blood supremacist. You put one fourth of your school under the banner of a proto-Death Eater, is it really so surprising they turn out the way they have?”

“It’s not the name that matters, though, ‘Mione. You could call it, I don’t know, Longbottom and if you funneled all the little rich prats who think they’re better than everyone else into it, I reckon it’d be the same.”

“Speaking of,” Harry says, before his self-control catches up to his mouth. “Do you lot know if Malfoy's coming back?”

Hermione and Ron exchange a look. _What is that supposed to mean_.

Ron shrugs, with sort of an Oh-Merlin-not-this-again type expression, as he struggles to open a chocolate frog. “How should we know?”

“I don’t know, I was just —” Curious? Wondering? Does that sound at all normal? Why should he be _wondering_ anything about Malfoy, anyway?

“I — Luna said something, the other day,” Hermione says, with a short little sigh through her nose. It isn’t like last time, Harry wants to say, but he’s not sure if that’s the truth, and knows that saying it would only be self-incriminating at best. “She may have mentioned that… she said he was _thinking_ about coming back. Does it really matter, though, Harry?”

“It’s called ‘regression,’” Ron says under his breath. Harry ignores this, but his pulse is starting to jump.

Harry tries to shrug but his shoulders are tight and it feels kind of jerky. “It’s just. That was weird, at the party, right? Like, Luna? Luna and Malfoy?”

“Do you reckon they’re snogging?” Ron muses, and he finally tears the package with an, "Aha!"

Harry and Hermione make twin faces of revulsion. Harry doesn't want to - cannot think about that.

Ron swears as the frog frees itself from between his fingers and leaps to the window. It clings and leaves little chocolate smudges where the sun melts its feet.

* * *

 

There’s a hush that wasn’t there before, as students approach the carriages, and look up to see the leathery black hides of the thestrals, bathed in the blue light of the moon. Harry isn’t paying much attention, being, as he is, on a search of great importance, for Draco Malfoy. But the difference is so obvious even he notices.

The kids — and he realizes it then, that most of them are kids, and he is not, and feels comically old — streamed off the train in a great sugar-rush, laughing and joking and elbowing one another but when they got off the platform their laughter died in the warm dark air. Now, they falter, their breath catches, the way Harry’s did once. There are few students who can’t see the thestrals.

“What are they?” one girl says, shrinking back.

“Easy, easy, yer alright. That’s thestrals, that’s all.” A great booming voice, Hagrid’s voice. He’s waving his arms, gently shoo-ing the younger ones along to the path to the boat ramp. If Hagrid’s thinking about what it means, that so many of them can see them, for the first time, it doesn’t show on his face. “They won’t bite yeh.”

It’s Ron’s first time really seeing them too. He watches the creatures as they wait their turn in the grass, wrinkling his nose a little. “Ugly buggers, aren’t they?”

Harry thinks they’re beautiful, but he doesn’t say this. He didn’t always. At first they repulsed him. Maybe Luna got into his head. Their necks are long, skin stretched tight against the knobs of their spine but they arc like a deer’s, and the leather of their wings goes transparent in the light as one of them stretches just a little, delicate and shot through with thin winding veins.

The first years disembark without issue. They lived through the war, but they were not at Hogwarts. Most of them seem not to notice the thestrals as they pass. But as the second years walk, many of them freeze. A very small girl with white beads in her hair starts to cry.

Hagrid shushes her, saying, “Easy there, easy. It'll be al'right.”

“This is horrible,” Hermione says at Harry’s side. This is her first time seeing them up close too. She eyes their gaunt faces and milky white eyes with an expression Harry can’t read.

“You get used to it,” Harry says, a little distractedly. She's talking about the bigger thing, the traumatized children, not the thestrals. He knows that. But he doesn't want to think  about that. He’s still looking for Malfoy, scanning the older students at the sides near the platform. “They’ll get used to it too.”

The third years start climbing in the carriages. They don’t need help, so Hagrid steps back. Picks up his lantern off the ground.

When he looks their way, Harry waves his hand. It feels awkward, but the look on Hagrid’s face is worth it.

He barrels toward them, a great ship parting the sea of third and fourth years, and says, “Harry Potter!” and promptly crushes him.

Harry cannot breathe, cannot see if Malfoy were to walk past, much less tell if he is being sinister or strange. Harry can only make muffled grunting sounds and breathe in the reek of lavender moth balls and some sort of terrible musky cologne and something like raw meat that Harry is afraid may be stuffed into Hagrid's pockets and seeping onto Harry's robes. Hagrid releases him, and Harry gasps for breath, his ribs throbbing.

“Ah,” he pants, “Hagrid. Good to. See you.”

“Good ter see you too, Harry. Didn’ know if… All three of yeh, again. If Dumbledore could’a — ” His eyes are misty. Harry fights to keep his dry. He missed Hagrid. He really did. For a moment, he pushes Malfoy from his head. Hagrid brings up a big sleeve to scrub at his face and wipes his nose with a big snort. “Well, no time for tha’. If yeh’ve got the time, come an’ see me fer a cuppa. Or somethin’ stronger. Hey!”

A fourth year girl, who Harry suspects is trying to impress the girl opposite her by proving she is _not_ afraid, yanks at the silky hair of the thestral closest to the bed of the carriage. Its hooves kick up dust in a little dismayed dance.

“Stop tha’, yeh hear me! Tha's not nice at all!” And with that, Hagrid’s gone, and Harry watches his big body plow its way back through the crowd.

After the young ones have filed out, the older group starts to board. Still no sign of Malfoy or, for that matter, his doppelganger. It's dark though, and Harry has had entirely too much coffee on the ride over, and doesn't trust his own eyes anymore. Malfoy could, ostensibly, be anywhere, doing anything. And that's unnacceptable.

“Where’s Luna, I wonder?” Harry asks as innocently as he can, as they start climbing into the carriage. At this point, he’s desperate for _any_ blonde head. He’s so stupid. He should have just found her on the train and asked her, instead of…  whatever this is.

“Dunno,” says Ron, without looking at him, as Hermione murmurs, “I can’t say I’ve seen her.”

Both of them sit a little too rigidly in the carriage, and their eyes are far away. Harry knows they’re dealing with their own problems right now. Just yesterday evening when Harry pictured himself in the carriage gliding across the grounds and past the dark thicket of forest where he saw the spirits of his parents and everyone Harry held dear, tracing with his eyes each jagged wounds of the castle, the rubble and dust, half-patched and healing, but still open, Harry broke out in a cold sweat.

But Malfoy is, once more, a brilliant distraction.

To Harry’s frustration, it’s Dean and not Luna who makes their way to the carriage and asks, “Is it alright if I sit here?”

He and Seamus slide in beside them. And the thestrals break into a trot.

The ride is quiet. A little somber. Seamus slumps, eyeing the back of the thestral’s neck and picking at a scab on his knuckle. He’s nervous about something. Harry remembers them at the party, leaning on one another, practically spooning at night, but tonight, sober, they sit at opposite poles of the small bench. Dean flinches as they take off, though the jolt is the same as it’s always been.

“I didn’t expect to see you, Harry. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see you. I just thought you were, you know. With the Aurors already,” Dean says, attempting small talk.

“Me too,” Harry says. “I’m not. Not yet.”

“Oh,” Dean says, as if Harry has just revealed the loss of a loved one. “I’m sorry.”

Dean is great and an important person in Harry’s life but at the moment, Harry hates him. He doesn’t want to think about the Aurors at all. And now suddenly Harry finds himself wondering what Ron and Hermione have told the others about it. Oh, you know, it’s — he’s fragile right now, he just couldn’t do it this year. It’s been hard. He needs time. He just needs a little time.

Harry grits his teeth. Says, “It’s fine.”

* * *

 

They land, go to collect their belongings, and Harry decides to lose his suitcase.

It’s not a good plan nor a well-thought through one. In fact, he has given it no thought whatsoever. But it feels like a thing he could do to buy him a little time, to investigate. Honestly at this point, if he finds out Malfoy is not, in fact, going to be at Hogwarts, he doesn't know what he will do. He's already made such a fool of himself. The thought of it being all for nothing...

Harry still can't articulate the reasons for what he's doing, or even what he hopes to learn. But at least this way there's the possibility of learning... _something_? He wants some small revelation, even if it's, hey, Malfoy was a prat all this time because he has chronic and acute spattergroit or, or some sort of nasty blood malediction or something. And it wasn't under control until this year, but maybe Luna helped him control it, and that's why they're suddenly best mates. Whatever it is, he wants to find it out, through the tried-and-true tactics that worked so well for the both of them in sixth year.

Maybe, a small part of his brain says, you don't have Dumbledore or Voldemort to give you a Quest of the Year, so you're making up your own shit one. But Harry shakes his head, and decides to ignore his brain entirely.

“Merlin, why do they all have to look the same,” Harry says louder than he needs to, rifling through what is now a considerably diminished pile. He’s caught a glimpse of his luggage already. It's wedged between Ritchie Coote’s and a girl named Nya's.

But there are still carriages coming closer, kicking up wet dirt along the path, one of which might house Luna and or Malfoy.

Ron and Hermione found theirs quickly. They're standing, staring at him. Crookshank’s eyes glow orange in her cage, locked straight on Harry. She meows, disdainfully, and he feels stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s not a sophisticated gambit. But he’s started it so now he’s _going_ to follow through.

Ron scratches at his head. “I thought you had your name on it already, Harry?”

“Well, if I could read the name tag, I’d have already found my bloody suitcase, wouldn’t I?”

“Honestly, Harry. Would you like any help?” Hermione says, with a little edge in her voice. She starts to lift her wand —

“Er, hey, don’t just _accio_ it,” he tells her, holding up his hand. “It’s fragile. I mean, there’s fragile things in it. You two can go on without me. I’ll catch up to you.”

Hermione gives him a look that says, _you’ve really lost it now_. She definitely suspects something. It’s certainly not as if Harry gave her no reason to be suspicious. But she sighs. Shrugs. Leaves him to it, pulling Ron along after her.

Another group of carriages land. The group of riders start to dismount.

And who does he see, but Draco Malfoy.

Harry stands and steps away from the pile of suitcases. He narrows his eyes. _Found you._

Malfoy dismounts unsteadily. He walks two steps and turns back toward the thestrals. They blow puffs of air from their noses, toss their heads, tug against the harness. Malfoy’s in a black turtleneck, a long black robe. He’s a patch of unlit sky, the pale shock of his head and his hands floating, disembodied. Harry can feel the tension radiating out from him, all the way over here, just looking at the set of his shoulders. It brings him back to a bathroom, those trembling shoulders, grey swollen eyes in the mirror — and Harry feels a little sick. But he can’t turn  away. Other students stream past Malfoy on their way to get their luggage.

Harry has been waiting for this moment all night and now that it’s here, that he knows he’ll have to deal with Malfoy for the rest of the year - thank Merlin - he doesn’t know what to do. It’s not a clear cut answer, like last time, _is Malfoy a Death Eater?_ Now it’s something more like, _What the hell happened to him? And why do I care?_

“Hi, Harry,” say two voices in harmony, and Harry jumps. It’s Padma and Parvati, smiling (and squinting a little) at him as they pass.

“Hi, can't find my - ” he says weakly. He makes a show of fiddling with the pile of stuff again. It's dwindling fast. An impatient Ravenclaw elbows Harry as she practically snatches a bag from his hands. When he looks back —

One long bony hand reaches out. It catches Harry by surprise, though perhaps it shouldn’t, that it's shaking. The hand moves slowly, faltering, then - just barely - grazes the skin at the shoulder of the thestral.

Its skeletal head turns to look at him, its pale eyes bright in the darkness.

Malfoy jerks back. Stumbles a little.

Harry averts his gaze before Malfoy turns around. He cannot — he will not be caught again. This time, Malfoy does not get to have the upper hand.

Harry makes a beeline for his luggage, unearths it roughly, toppling Ritchie’s suitcase and upending a big leather bag filled with buttons, and he nearly sprints to the castle. Harry’s heart is thudding in his chest, because of his quick pace and the view of the castle spires above them, and Harry cannot breathe only because of the effort of moving his body, and the cool wet air rolling off the Black Lake.

Nothing else.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry is distracted all through the first year sorting ceremony. The hall is rich with the smell of roasted meat, rich, buttery vegetables, warm spiced pumpkin juice, sugary pastries. The house banners hang heavy from the ceiling, no longer tattered and burnt as they were when Harry last saw them.

They did not, to Hermione’s chagrin, rename Slytherin, or change the house system at all. The eight years will be treated as seventh years, housed in the same dorms. Harry murmurs in agreement with whatever Hermione and Ron are talking about with Dean and Seamus but he is not really listening.

Information. Harry needs more information about what happened at the trial. Why Malfoy sold his own father up the river. Harry thinks, for some reason, that this is the key. In all his years having the misfortune to know the Malfoy family, the only charitable thing he can really say about them is that they look out for their own — so what the fuck. _Is Malfoy really just that cutthroat?_

Harry tries to watch him through the meal. He catches glimpses when the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs at the tables between them duck their heads to take a bite of food, or lean to sling an arm around one of their friends.

“Y’know, me mam says Hogwarts won’t do away with Slytherin because the pureblood families would send their children elsewhere and stop giving money over to the school.”

“Your mum doesn’t — ” Dean starts to say, and pauses. “Actually your mum’s got a point this time.”

“Watch yourself, Thomas,” says Seamus, waggling a fork stuck with a sausage on it. “Me mam’s always got a point.”

“Look at McGonagall up there,” Ron says, gesturing with his head. “She looks right tired already. It hasn’t even been a day.”

Harry doesn’t turn to look, because a Ravenclaw girl with rather wide shoulders has just gotten up to go talk to a friend a ways down the table, and Harry’s visibility is sharply improved.

Malfoy is sitting alone. It makes sense. It’s not like the bloke was ever good at treating his friends like, well, friends. Harry hasn’t seen Goyle anywhere, and Crabbe is nothing but ashes in the fiendfyre.

But then — he scans the table for Pansy Parkinson and finds her, talking to a girl with curly hair near the front of the Great Hall.

Weird. He squints back at Malfoy, who seems to be wary of his food. Harry hasn’t seen him take a bite, though he holds the fork and knife in both hands. His eyes dart around the room.

Malfoy was here during the Battle, Harry knows, ducking and running and sniveling for his pathetic life. And the year before that, stumbling after Bellatrix as the candles that now glow, hovering in the air like torchbugs, all went out and fell, one by one, smoking, as glass littered the air.

Something spiteful deep in Harry hopes Malfoy is reliving this too, the gust of wind on his face, the smell of smoke, the dissonant echo of Bellatrix’s laugh. If Harry has to remember these things, Malfoy should, by rights, remember twice as strongly.

“Of course she’s tired,” Hermione is saying. “The faculty’s been working all summer. I can’t believe it. This place looks almost normal again. This room was blown through in so many places. All the windows. Right there —” In Harry’s peripherals, she’s pointing. “You could see the moon and the stars right through it.”

“Should’ve kept it open,” Ron says, trying to lighten the mood. “Then they wouldn’t need to re-enchant the ceiling. Bit of natural starlight, you know, good for the digestion.”  

“Don’t remind me,” Dean says. His voice is a little strangled. “It wasn’t so bad, right after, I was just relieved but… now that things are normal… Being in here feels wrong. I— I saw someone die in this room. I guess we all did, right?”

Seamus blows air out of his nose. “Not the fucking Slytherins, squirreled away safe from harm off castle grounds.”

“To be fair, McGonagall gave the order. It doesn’t make it… untrue, but we can’t exactly blame them for —”

“She evacuated them,” Seamus says slowly, through gritted teeth, “because they would’ve fought against us.”

They’re silent. No one can tell Seamus he’s wrong. Some of them _did_ return to fight alongside Voldemort. One of them in particular cornered Harry in the Room of Requirement and threatened to hand him over to the Dark Lord and then, after he once again owed Harry his life on account of being saved from an agonizing cooked-from-the-inside death, acted like it meant nothing and didn’t apologize to anyone and was better than Harry at exploding snap and stole his friends but still refused to speak to Harry with anything resembling civility. Let alone gratitude.

Across the Hall, Harry thinks he sees Malfoy’s eyes rest pleadingly on Luna. But she’s talking to Padma and Cho at the Ravenclaw table. Her head is turned away from him. This brings Harry a little comfort. They might be friends, fucking somehow, but he’s not her first priority. Far from it.

Serves him right, Harry thinks, to be alone. The prick.

Harry starts unpacking his things in the Gryffindor dormitory. It’s just as he remembered it, but the familiar crackle of fire in the common room sets him on edge, and the heaviness of all the red velvet and the layers of ornate swirling gold veneer around everything starts to feel overwhelming in a way it never did before.

Beside Harry, Ron is folding his clothes -- a habit he’s picked up from Hermione -- and continuing his conversation with Dean and Seamus as Harry puts his robes away in the trunk at the foot of his bed without really bothering to fold them, but it’s good enough. Harry’s heart is not in the task. He’s turning over scenarios in his mind.

Why would Malfoy send Lucius packing to Azkaban if there wasn’t a _reason_ ? Harry pulls Molly’s red knitted _H_ sweater out of his suitcase, and shoves it in the chest. Maybe Lucius wanted to be there. Maybe to make contact with someone, one of the imprisoned Death Eaters, most likely. There were so many trials, the month after the battle. Harry shoves his invisibility cloak in. It catches a little on the lip of the trunk, but doesn’t tear.

When he saw Malfoy at Luna’s party, he’d wondered if someone had put him under the _imperius_ curse. But what if it was Luna under the _imperius_? Malfoy could be using her to craft a cover for himself, all the while aiding and abetting his father. It’s not an insane thought. He’s done it before. Why else come back to Hogwarts, where Malfoy would be hated, where he would be alone. Getting his NEWTS wouldn’t do anything about that black ugly scar on his wrist —

As Harry holds the chest open with one hand and reaches for the next soft garment-y thing he can grab, his hand slips, and the weight of the trunk lid comes crashing down on his thumbnail.

“Fuck.” Harry winces and holds his thumb tightly in his fist.

Ron and Dean give him an almost simultaneous "Alright, mate?" and Harry nods feverishly. It fails to convince.

Seamus narrows his eyes at Harry. “Something’s eating you, mate,” he says. “I can tell.”

“Could say the same for you,” Harry says, willing his thumb to stop hurting. If he was smart, he would have learned basic healing magic, but instead he started relying on Hermione to do it and coasted through seven years of wizardhood knowing just about only how to fucking _stupefy_ , and Merlin is he an idiot in every possible fucking way.

Seamus shrugs gives him a look that says, more or less, _fair enough_ , and goes back to putting away his shoes. Harry slinks off to the bathroom to brush his teeth and piss and when he comes back, Dean and Seamus are talking in low soft tones behind the bed curtain, sitting on Seamus’s bed.

They’re silhouetted by the light of a candle — Harry can see the longer shadow, Dean’s, cross legged on the bed and Seamus with his back slumped against the headboard, his knees drawn up to his chest. The shadow of Dean’s hands move gracefully, ebbing toward and away from Seamus behind the sheet of red velvet. For a moment, he thinks of Malfoy’s fingers hovering toward the thestral. Long, tentative. Approaching and retreating.

Harry finds himself watching, feels a jolt of _something_ when Dean reaches out, rests his hand lightly on Seamus’s arm.

“Bloody hell, Seamus wasn’t kidding,” Ron says, and Harry starts. Ron is watching _him_ from between the half-drawn curtains of his bed. “You ok, Harry? Really?”

Harry snorts, waves his left hand, the back of it facing Ron. _I must not tell lies_. Ron accepts this as an answer. He lets Harry collapse into bed without interrogation.

Harry tries to sleep. In time, Dean ducks out from between the curtains and wishes them a good night, and Harry hears the slightest shake in his voice. After that, there’s nothing to distract Harry from Malfoy.

“Have you heard anything from your dad about Azkaban since the Battle?” Harry whispers over to Ron, when he can’t bite his tongue anymore. “Anything weird, I mean? Like plots, breakouts, strange behavior, anything?”

“Wait, Azkaban? What are you going on about, Harry?” Ron grumbles, and turns toward him. The light from Harry’s candle, that he hasn’t yet snuffed, makes his skin look waxy and golden, shuddering with the flicker of the light. “You’re doing _this_ again? Really? Already? Merlin, it’s the first day back.”

“What do you mean? What’s _this_?”

“This thing where you fixate on something and you let it drive you bonkers, and then we all have to put up with it for a year.”

Harry reaches for his bedside stand, and his fingers find a pack of Bertie Bott’s Dean gave him after dinner, spilling out on the bedside table. Harry chucks it at Ron’s head. It hits him in the shoulder.

“What — the bloody hell was that?” Ron says, rubbing his skin and feeling around for the projectile.

“What you deserve. The thing about the _this_ is that I’m always right. Tell me I’m not.”

“Oh, you’re always right?” Ron hisses. “What exactly is it you’re _right_ about this time? Enlighten me. Prat.”

Harry finds himself laughing. “You don’t talk to me like this when Hermione’s around.”

“Can’t.” Ron pulls the blanket up over his shoulder, closer to him. “She’s worried about you.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Ron, I know. I know that.”

There’s a long pause. Harry considers closing the curtain and snuffing the candle and leaving it at that. But Ron speaks before he can do that. “I can’t say I’m not worried either.”

“Well, don’t be. You’re not my mum. I’ve never had one. I’m used to it.”

Ron makes a small frustrated noise. “I can’t just make myself not care about you, you arse. The way I see it… I’ve had Hermione to help me, right, and at first you had Ginny, but then…”

Harry almost blurts it out. _I saw your sister snogging a girl at Luna’s party, actually. I never had Ginny. Which is fine_. But then this feels untrue. They did have one another, for a short time, before they started trying to touch each other. Harry used to spend night after night with her on the porch of the Burrow, below the cool distant stars, with their arms wrapped around one another’s backs, just talking.

 _Now I guess I feel a little bit of what you’ve felt all this time. When you think of your mum, or — or, of Sirius, do you just feel… like, like this physical vertigo? Like you've taken a bludger to the gut and got knocked off your broom. That’s what I feel._ Ginny's spine was bent and she used to run her hands through her hair when they talked like this, over and over until it clumped and shone with grease. It bothered her, having it so long and falling in her face. When she finally cropped it three months after the war, so short Harry could see the outline of her skull, he was stunned at the suddenness of the change, but not surprised. _There’s a scorch mark Fred left on the kitchen wall, one of his and George’s stupid tests. The prototypes of the Instant Darkness Powder burned at first when you used them. A puff of black fire. Fred was just freckles and skin for a week. When I look at that mark, I feel like I’m falling._

Harry swallows hard. He’s going to write her soon. Between matches and trainings for the Harpies she comes back to the Burrow. She might even be able to plumb Arthur Weasley for more detailed information about what happened at the trial.

So instead of saying anything about Ginny’s snogging history, which is really none of Ron’s business, Harry just shakes his head. “I’m ok. Seriously. And besides. Girls aren’t, like, auxiliary emotion processors. I can work through it fine on my own.”

“What?” Ron sputters. “I— I know that about girls, thank you very much.”

“Ron. You don’t know anything about girls.”

Ron glares at Harry, and then reaches out to snuff his candle. “G’night, prick. Have a good year I guess.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He whispers a soft _nox_ , and then the room goes dark. “G’night Ron.”

 _I care about you, too_ , he thinks but doesn’t say. _You and Hermione. I love you_. _But I’m going to drive you both mad until you get rid of me.  
_

 

* * *

 

That night, Harry dreams of Teddy again. In Grimmauld place again, in the grey hazy light of the dining room, Harry watches as a bony, black haired man moves toward Teddy, asleep on the table, wrapped in a blanket. Sinew twists under skin that has shrunk inward, painted with black lines and alchemical scrawlings. Sirius. He moves like he’s underwater —  tangles of dark greying hair float back behind him.

Harry’s godfather approaches Harry’s godson and pulls him into his arms. Sirius raises Teddy high in the air and spins. He is exhausted but elated. Relieved to have found Remus’s beautiful son. The white blanket unwraps from Teddy’s chubby legs and falls to the floor in slow motion. Teddy does not laugh or smile. He stares down at Sirius, unblinking.

Footsteps creak against the wooden floor. There is a pressure at Sirius’s throat. Harry feels it like it’s his own. A prick of cold metal, a silver snake’s head. Lucius’s cane presses against Sirius’s jugular.

Sirius jolts. His grasp loosens under Teddy’s arms. The child falls.

 

* * *

 

Harry wakes up to a sharp, searing pain at his forehead. The sensation is so familiar that it takes him half of breakfast to realize that he hasn’t felt it since Voldemort’s death. Harry rubs at the sore skin surreptitiously, pretending he’s messing with his hair or propping up his head. He eats very little. Beside him, Luna, Padma, and Cho have joined the others at the Gryffindor table, talking with Hermione, Lavender, Parvati, Dean, Seamus, and a still somewhat skeptical Ron. They're talking about re-establishing S.P.E.W. Before Ron has committed to joining, he proposes a name change, which is met with unanimous approval.

Malfoy appears not to be at breakfast. He examines Luna for signs of the _imperius_ curse. She’s dreamy and strange as ever, but her eyes are focused, not glazed over.

The ache in his scar lingers, with the memory of Teddy in Sirius’s arms.Harry hasn’t seen Teddy since the last time Andromeda visited the Burrow. Teddy had been unnervingly quiet that evening, almost sullen. He didn’t cry, but he wouldn’t laugh either. Not  even when George stuck his cheeks out wide and crossed his eyes, even when Hermione blew raspberries on his fat pink cheeks. Harry had found himself hesitant to hold Teddy. He has Remus’s dark eyes. Always somber. Harry found himself staring at his godson but seeing Remus’s face, feeling like everyone who had ever told him, _You have your mother’s eyes_.

Harry goes to a long Herbology lecture and then an uneventful Charms class. Malfoy doesn't show his face in either. When Harry thinks of him now, he feels the cool metal at his throat.

Hermione corners Harry after it ends. Her voice has the sharp edge of panic. She backs him against a wall more or less, after rounding on him in the arched corridor, marked by cracks in the stone that weren’t there before. “You keep touching your forehead, Harry, all through the lecture when you thought I wasn’t looking. Tell me it’s nothing.”

“It’s nothing,” Harry says automatically, and then feels guilty. It’s easier to lie to Ron.

Hermione’s chest rises and falls too fast. Her eyes are bright and a little wild. “It’s nothing,” she repeats.

“I — I had a dream last night, kind of a weird dream. I think it’s just in my head. That’s all. Voldemort’s dead, it can’t mean anything.”

Hermione goes very still. When she unfreezes, she starts muttering at incredible speed. “Ok, it’s alright, I thought there might be aftershocks. With magical connections like that, it’s never a clean severance, it leaves scar tissue, in your case literally, and doubly so with this kind of trauma — there are some books I’ve been meaning to look at for a while now, and, and — you should go talk to Madam Pomfrey, and, well, no, before that you have to tell the Headmaster, just in case —”

“I’m not going to.” Everyone in his life thinks Harry is insane enough already.

“Harry, please. This is serious. You can’t keep shutting us out and pretending you’re fine.” Hermione lets out a tight breath. “I know it’s hard being back here. Maybe — maybe that’s it. We’re in the place he was when he died. For this to happen on the first night… maybe a tiny, infinitesimal sliver of his spirit just… lingered.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. The pain is making it hard to think. He starts trying to walk, and Hermione lets him. She follows at his side, clutching her books tight to her chest.

“What — who did you see? In the dream?”

“Sirius,” Harry says. Something keeps him from mentioning Lucius or Teddy. Sirius is gone, so, by a twisted sort of logic, he’s safe. Talking about the Malfoys yet again would just push Hermione over the edge. He’s already said entirely too much about them since the party. Mentioning Teddy would send her into a full-out panic.

Hermione locks eyes with Harry. Then looks down at her feet. “I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t know why I keep thinking all of this will… I don’t know. Stop. Let you breathe. It isn’t fair.” When Harry doesn’t respond, she continues. “But nothing’s fair, I guess. Everything you went through, everything we all went through, everything the house elves have suffered, everything muggle-borns and half-bloods and wizard-borns have suffered…”

“Doesn’t matter. These things happened, they keep happening,” Harry says, squinting. Streaming through an adjacent corridor is a tall blonde boy in a white button-up shirt that’s too large for him. Harry forces himself not to run after him. He doesn’t want a repeat of last time. And what could he say to Malfoy, _Why the fuck did I dream about your father_?

“I know, Harry.” Hermione leads him into the interior hall of the castle, and Harry loses sight of Malfoy, which is probably for the better. “They keep happening, so we have to stop them. That means… trying new things, and,” Hermione shoots him a cautious look, “being vulnerable.”

“I told you about my dream, Hermione, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Hermione smiles, but her face hasn’t fully lost that tired, haunted look she’d had when she first asked him about the scar. “I wanted to tell you, during Muggle Studies last class, Cho had an idea of what to call S.P.E.W. now. We were talking about how “promoting welfare” for house elves isn’t enough. It's all connected. The whole system of blood supremacy rests on their slave labor and the maintenance of a muggle-born underclass. She suggested we call it the Society for the Abolition of Blood Supremacy -- S.T.A.B.S.”

“That's... dramatic. Where’s the F?”

“It’s silent,” Hermione says, and laughs. They begin their descent down the damp-smelling spiral stairwell into the dungeons. Harry starts smelling something buttery and strangely spicy on the air as they approach the potions lab.

“You have friends, Harry.” Hermione drops her voice to a whisper, as footsteps echo against the stone from above them. “People who have been through many of the things you have. You don’t have to face everything alone.”

Harry’s heard this same speech more times than he can count. But the ache is beginning to fade, just a little. Hermione holds the door to potions lab open.

Inside, Ron is already seated, along with most of the other students — including drawn, pointy face that is promptly eclipsed by the round figure of Professor Slughorn, in heavy purple velvet robes. He greets Harry and “Miss Granger” with two moist and vigorous handshakes. A few students filter in behind them, as Harry goes to get his book from the cabinet, to a much cooler welcome.

Hermione, who already has her book, sits at the desk beside Ron. Harry feels a little sting at that, in his chest this time, not his forehead. The desks have two chairs each. No matter what, they’d break the trio. But it always seemed to split the same way.

Harry takes his time finding the newest, least written in textbook. Harry wants no repeats of the Half-Blood Prince incident. When he turns around, having unofficially assumed the position of book distributor and foisted two battered books on Ernie Macmillan and Fay Dunbar, Fay is begrudgingly setting her belongings in the seat beside Millicent Bulstrode, leaving only one empty seat.

The seat beside Draco Malfoy.


	4. Chapter 4

“Well, well, Potter,” Malfoy says when Harry sits down. “Funny we keep meeting like this.” His drawl is low, less inflected than normal. He sounds exhausted. _This again. Of course._

Harry is ready to lose it. His head aches with a sharp, pounding pain and he cannot think.

At the head of the class, Slughorn begins by clapping his hands and fixing them all with one of his slightly deranged expressions. “Right, well, thank you all for coming. I expect and truly, truly hope that this will be a productive and slightly less eventful year for all of us…”

Harry turns around in his seat to shoot Ron and Hermione a slightly outraged, very bewildered look. _Help_ , he mouths.

Ron shrugs, helplessly. _How?_

When Harry turns back, Malfoy is staring at him with those cold grey eyes. Harry is struck by his resemblance to Lucius. Both of them, always so colorless and insolent. For a moment Harry’s struck by an unsettling thought. Teddy may be Harry’s godson, but he’s also Malfoy’s cousin. By blood.

“You look like shit, Potter,” Malfoy says. “Not sleeping?” Maybe he sneers, or maybe his mouth is just like that.

“You’re not exactly a Veela yourself, prat.”

Malfoy’s hand darts to the silver ring in his ear. With the movement, his sleeve, rolled up with what Harry reads as a sort of self-conscious carelessness, falls back to expose a line of black ink on Malfoy’s skin. The triangular head of a snake emerges.

A jolt of pain flares through his scar and echoes around his skull.

Harry grimaces. Malfoy sees it — he yanks the sleeve back up.

“Mr. Potter? Are you quite with us, Mr. Potter?”

“Harry,” Hermione hisses. He turns and she’s pointing at Slughorn, who is rocking on his feet with a slightly forced grin and looking directly at him.

“Sorry, Professor —” Harry stammers.

“I was just wondering if my star pupil could enlighten the class on exactly how long it takes to brew the _felix felicis_ potion?”

Malfoy’s grip on his pen tightens. He mutters, through his teeth, “Star pupil…”

Harry wills himself to remember, but he can’t. He remembers what he did with the vial Slughorn had given him. The long foggy walk on the grounds toward Hagrid’s shack and the spider’s funeral and the memory he extracted. Tom Riddle with his high posh voice and his bright unnerving eyes. But that’s all.

“I— don’t know, Sir.”

“It takes three months, Professor,” Malfoy says, with venom in his voice.

“Precisely,” Slughorn says, but does not offer any points to Slytherin. “So, this semester we’ll be undertaking a longer sort of endeavor. An exercise in patience, one of the most crucial attributes for the advanced Potions Master. I don’t expect you to get it right, but I do expect tenacity, attention, and precision. Yes, Miss Granger?”

Hermione has a look of apprehension on her face. Harry knows she almost didn’t take her N.E.W.T. in Potions, because she was thinking of a ministry position, but at the last minute she changed her mind. Better safe than sorry.

“Excuse me, sir,” she says, “but as far as I know, _felix felicis_ is one of the most difficult potions to brew. If one gets it wrong…”

“Oh, quite, quite. It can indeed be deadly!” Slughorn says, with too much enthusiasm. “So you’d best not muck it up! Think of this as a little incentive to perform at your highest. You’ll be working in pairs with your desk mates. I trust the seats in which you’re sitting will be satisfactory.”

Slughorn scans the class — Harry thinks he’s intentionally trying not to look at his and Malfoy’s desk. “Unless there’s anyone who would like to request a change…?”

Harry shoots his hand in the air. Malfoy lets out a sharp sigh through his nose.

“Right,” Slughorn says, wiping his hands on his coat lapels. “Well, would anyone be willing to switch with Mr. Potter?”

Silence. Crossed arms. Averted eyes. Merlin, does Harry wish Luna was taking a N.E.W.T. in Potions.

 _Okay_ , he thinks numbly. _This is how it’s going to be_. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe… this could be an opportunity to force Malfoy to give him some answers. But Harry suspects the Potions classroom isn’t not the right place to ask the questions he has.

“No matter, no matter. I trust you can be professional about this, Mr. Potter,” Slughorn says, then winks at Harry. “Perhaps you could even share a little of your brewer’s wisdom with Mister Malloy.”

Malfoy’s grip goes so tight on his quill Harry hears, a soft snapping sound, then a _Reparo_ , muttered through his teeth.

The rest of Potions is miserable. The gloves Slughorn passes out are far too large for Malfoy’s hands and he keeps breaking the brittle frozen shells of the ashwinder eggs and using them as an excuse to go to the storeroom to get away from Harry.

When he’s gone, Harry formulates and re-formulates questions he knows he won’t ask.

 _So. Your father’s in Azkaban, and you put him there. Why?_ Too direct. He’d get hexed.

 _I heard about what happened at the trial. Is your mother still speaking to you after what you did?_ Way too personal. Not that relevant, either. But thinking about Narcissa leads Harry to another thought, one that makes his stomach drop sickeningly.

 _Andromeda_. Obviously. She’s the link between the Malfoy’s and Teddy.

“Have you heard from your aunt lately?” Harry blurts out when Malfoy comes stalking back with another frosty jar full of eggs.

Malfoy sets it on the table with a sharp _cl— k!_ and Harry feels sure he’s just broken a few more shells. His eyes are practically feral. “What could you possibly mean by that, Potter?”

“Andromeda. Do. You. Know. If. She’s. Well.”

“As much as it’s all very cordial of you, Star Pupil, please don’t try to make small talk with me,” Malfoy says through gritted teeth, uncorking the new bottle. “Just pass me the fucking tongs.”

When they finally manage to add intact ashwinder eggs to the pot, the water begins to steam and simmer. A thin sheen of humidity starts clinging to Malfoy’s skin, making him look feverish. The long parts of his hair start to curl a little at the ends. They move on to chopping the squill bulbs. Malfoy is a control freak and won’t let Harry do anything. He reads off the instructions in his imperious voice and he just about yanks the knife from Harry’s hand after his first attempt.

“Merlin, Potter, can you do anything with any degree of precision? You’re _mangling_ it.”

Malfoy scrunches up his face and cuts long, elegant incisions into the deep rich burgundy meat of the bulbs. The moons of his fingernails are stained red.

Malfoy’s movements are tense and erratic, but he at the same time, Harry notices, he holds himself delicately. There’s something almost feminine about how he moves his hands. Harry hadn’t noticed it before.

He finds himself thinking of Dean last night, his hand on Seamus, and Harry feels an unplaceable weirdness on top of the low-grade panic over his dream and over Malfoy, Lucius’s son, sitting just a foot from him.

Harry doesn’t know what to do with that. Not at all.

 

* * *

 

Harry survives Divination — Malfoy is there, but Harry had just about sprinted to the North Tower, with Hermione and Ron trailing after him, so they’d managed to snag a table together at the opposite end of the room.

Hermione wouldn’t have been caught dead in that class, and honestly, neither would Harry, but over the summer the Ministry decided to revisit their educational standards after the little Death Eater infiltration problem they had, Harry heard from Molly Weasley one night over leek and potato soup at the Burrow. Shacklebolt sponsored a motion to introduce Muggle Studies as a compulsory course for each year of schooling, up to and past N.E.W.T.s.

But then the purebloods made a great big expensive fuss, and put all their lobbyists hard at work to stall and derail the proposition, and, in classic Ministry style, the proposed changes backfired entirely.

Arthur had been there when Hildegard Cleft, the newly appointed Head of the department, stood in front of the whole Department of Magical Education and read the verdict. That night, Arthur had told the whole dinner table what she’d said, nearly word for word.

_Classes like Muggle Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts are, frankly, redundant. A waste of our finite resources. All components of a liberal wizarding education should teach diversity and tolerance, along with a healthy fear of dark magic._

_Henceforth, we shall advise Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to do away with these classes altogether. Instead, my colleagues propose a more... sensible, moderate adjustment of curriculum that will address the needs of all young witches and wizards, and prevent a repeat of the tragic events of the summer._

_Furthermore, given the role of omens and prophecy in the rise of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Divination classes shall be made mandatory —_ at this, George had snorted his pumpkin juice up his nose, and Hermione had made a face like she’d been caught by a stinging hex _._

So the Ministry passed that and a litany of pointless changes that Harry doesn’t remember, all of them reiterating the message that Cleft ended on —

_There will be no favoritism shown toward muggle-borns by the Ministry. Only absolute equality for all magical citizens in education, as in law._

In the end, McGonagall had been too busy with reconstruction to effectively fight even something so against her worldview as effectively replacing Defense Against the Dark Arts with crystal balls and tea leaves — she managed to keep Muggle Studies, though, albeit with a severe funding cut that made it difficult to find a successor for Professor Burbage.

As if the Ministry’s capitulation to the purebloods condemning Harry to another year of Divination isn’t maddening enough, Harry is also fuming at Ron and Hermione for abandoning him, and still residually worked up from having to deal with Malfoy, so he lets himself sulk a little.

Harry sits low in the chair with his arms crossed over his chest, and pretends not to notice Ron and Hermione offering him apologetic looks in his peripherals.

It’s sort of infantile, but that’s never stopped Harry before.

The scar-sting fades to into the background, under the heady incense-and-tea smell of the Divination classroom, and in time, Harry can almost forget about it. Instead, he starts thinking, _What the fuck am I even doing here_ ? _What’s any of this even for?_

It’s Trelawney’s day to teach, and next class they’ll meet with Firenze. Trelawney clutches her many-ringed fingers and speaks in warbling tones about the nuances of ornithomancy as the classroom studies the chaotic flit-flit-flit of a small grey sparrow let loose in the room. There are mosaic letters on the wall in an intricate gothic script. The direction of the sparrow’s flight should correspond with a letter, but Harry can barely keep sight of it.

The sparrow alights on a tall wooden cabinet near Malfoy’s table, full of milky crystal balls, and Malfoy stares at it, looking like he’s going to be sick.

As the bird flits around, twittering, Lavender stands.

Pale, rough scars mottle the skin at her neck and her arms. Greyback’s work. Parvati reaches out for her shoulder, but stops her hand mid-air — afraid to touch her.

Lavender’s dark eyes trace the path of the bird through the room.

“Yes, my dear?” Trelawney says, “What does the sparrow tell you?”

“Prophecy. Professor, it spelled out prophecy!”

Beside Harry, Hermione snorts. “Is that supposed to mean something? It’s like getting a letter that just says ‘epistle.’”

 

* * *

 

Afterward, Harry heads back to the common room with Ron and Hermione. He finds a sheet of parchment and sits on the floor with his back against the couch and begins to write:

 

> _Hey. Hi. Sorry it’s been so long, Gin. First day back was bullocks, and I miss you. I haven’t told Ron anything, just so you know, and I’m sorry for intruding or making things weird._

Harry says nothing of the dream, but gives the full play-by-play of the Malfoy debacle in Potions. After that, he tries to include, in as natural a way as possible, something asking her to pass on any information Arthur has about the Malfoys’ trial.

Harry finishes it quick before he can think it through too fully and realize it’s a stupid terrible idea. Then he takes out another sheet, making a conscious effort to improve his handwriting

 

> _Dear Andromeda,_
> 
> _It’s Harry. I’m just writing to see if you and Teddy are well—_

“I’m really sorry again, Harry,” Ron is saying on the couch above him. “I thought Fay would go for the one next to Malfoy, really.”

“Well. She didn’t,” Harry says, and keeps writing.

“Malfoy’s a sniveling little prat, but Bulstrode… right beast, that one. I’ve never forgiven her for what she did to Hermione in second year.”

“To be fair, that was mostly my fault.” Hermione is at the other end of the couch, absently stroking Crookshanks as she pores through _Secrets of the Darkest Art_. Harry can hear the soft mechanical sound of the cat purring, under the noises from a particularly raucous game of wizard chess two seventh years are engaged in near the fireplace.

Harry folds both of his letters into thirds and closes them with a sealing charm. Then he whistles for Hedwig without thinking.

“Mate…” Ron starts, but Harry has had enough, more than fucking enough of any of this. He stands up, and nearly sprints to the Owlery to mail his letters.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, Harry doesn't dream.

No Teddy, no Grimmauld place, no Lucius Malfoy. Just warm dark, and a vague feeling of falling. Then motion.

Ron shakes Harry by the shoulder.

“Get up,” Ron says, “We’re late to Transfiguration. McGonagall’s going to hang us by our thumbs in the Great Hall.”

McGonagall gives them a look when the two of them waltz in late with their teeth unbrushed and their ties loose around their necks. But Harry must look really wretched, because when she makes eye contact with Harry, the sharp creases around her mouth smooth out.

The worst they get is a curt “Thank you for joining us Mr. Weasley, Mr. Potter.”

Malfoy’s there again, which sends another jolt of frustration through Harry. He really can’t escape. Malfoy looks equally as pleased to see him. His eyes flit to the wall, then down to his closed textbook — he pretends not to notice Harry’s late entrance. Harry glares at the blonde top of his head through most of the class. He picks up very little of McGonagall’s lecture on the fundamentals of advanced human transfiguration.

Harry hadn’t thought Malfoy would be taking a N.E.W.T. in Transfiguration — he’d missed so many classes sixth year he couldn’t possibly have gotten his O.W.L., and besides, why bother? Harry always pictured Malfoy following in his father’s footsteps, severe and sneering with his hair all long and pale, stalking through the halls of the Ministry.

Harry squints at Malfoy, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. Either that, or he’d snag some obscenely well-paying job with Gringotts with a glitzy office on the second floor, a mini-chandelier hanging over his desk, and expensive, if slightly tasteless, painted snakes slithering through the gilded picture frames.

Harry tunes back in to the lesson when McGonagall starts talking about the differences and commonalities between animagi and metamorphmagi —

“As most of you _should_ already know,” McGonagall says, and clears her throat as if to say, _Though I’m sure most you you don’t_ , “An animagus acquires their abilities, intentionally, with great effort. Beyond the simple animal-human differences, that is what sets a metamorphmagus apart. To be a metamorphmagus is to have inborn talents —”

Without warning, Malfoy looks up, and his gaze darts toward Harry. Their eyes meet.

Both of them look away. Harry’s pulse starts to race again.

He leans over to Ron and whispers. “Metamorphmagus… that’s what Tonks was, right?”

What Harry really means is, _That’s what Teddy is_.

“Yeah, mate,” Ron says. “I’m a jealous of them, honestly. Would’ve made all that with the Snatchers and the Ministry so much easier if we could’ve skipped the Polyjuice.”

Harry feels his breathing getting faster. He’s at a low-grade panic. Why would Malfoy spend the whole class ignoring Harry, but then look at him when McGonagall mentioned that?

Harry stares at Ron, furiously scribbling notes on his parchment with his brow scrunched up and Harry is almost ready to spill his guts to Ron about the dreams and the whole tangle of anxiety that’s knotted itself inside Harry since Luna’s birthday party.

Maybe Malfoy knows something about whatever is happening to Teddy, and there’s some sort of connection between Lucius and Andromeda and maybe Luna too. _My godson might be in danger_. But it unravels the more Harry thinks it through. It could have been coincidental. Malfoy could easily have been glaring at him through the class, but Harry had only noticed just then.

After all, Malfoy has no way of knowing about Harry’s dream. And there’s no reason to associate Harry with anything about Teddy. He’s paranoid. It doesn’t add up.

So Harry holds his tongue.

 

* * *

 

Ron wanders off just after Transfiguration, probably to snog Hermione. Harry isn’t risking another Malfoy situation, so he walks to the warm, slightly dusty Charms classroom as fast as he can. The room smells like it used to, wood polish and ink, and the light that filters through the window is pinkish gold.

Harry claims the seat sandwiched between a bored looking Slytherin and Luna Lovegood. Luna is talking to Cho, at her left, when Harry walks in.

“That was the problem with last time, wasn’t it? You can’t force someone to want to be free. It’s very complex, how these kinds of things work.”

“Exactly. You know, she reminds me of mum sometimes.” Cho sighs, shaking her head. “The way she talks about this kind of thing… As if you can just decree something and make it true— ”

“Hi, Harry.” Luna tilts her head towards him. Her silver star earrings glimmer.

“Who are we taking the piss out of?” he says.

Cho purses her lips, looking a little ashamed, but Luna smiles and says cheerfully, “Hermione.”

“I want to be part of S.T.A.B.S.,” Cho says quickly, “and I— appreciate the second chance. I just have… some worries, based on everything with S.P.E.W.…”

Students fill the seats fast. Ron and Hermione wander in, and Harry makes Harry looks up just in time to see Malfoy set his books down at the desk just in front of Harry. The hairs at the nape of his neck are cut unevenly. After last class, and all of the strange coincidences with Malfoy lately, why is this is the thing that sticks out to Harry? It starts to drive him crazy, as Luna and Cho go back to talking about anti-blood supremacy organizing. Harry finds himself hoping Flitwick will cover non-verbal shearing charms at some point this semester.

Then Harry is struck by a thought, which, naturally, he blurts out.

“Did you cut Malfoy’s hair?” he whispers to Luna, as Flitwick climbs up to the high-backed purple chair behind the teacher’s desk and clears his throat twice. _Ahem. Ahem_.

Luna beams, her cheeks dimpling. “Do you like it, Harry?”

Harry doesn’t know how to answer that. “You two… really are close,” he says.

“I suppose you could say that.” Absently, Luna reaches over to one of Cho’s parchment scraps, and starts doodling a what looks like a very round hinkypunk, with a candle instead of a lantern. “It surprised both of us, I think. It’s been a very odd few months.”

“That’s one way to describe it,” Cho mutters, and smiles when Luna adds a rather flamboyant feathered hat to the top of the hinkypunk’s head.

Harry’s tired of beating around the bush. This is his chance. He’s going to leave the whole business of _How in hell did it even happen?_ for later, because that will be a whole conversation, and Harry isn’t sure he’s ready for it. He wants to stay focused on Teddy.

Instead, Harry says, “I know this is a weird question, but… do you know if Malfoy’s been around Teddy recently?”

Luna cocks her head at him. “You’re worried about something, Harry. You can be so proud, you know. It’s something big that you’re not sharing with anyone again, isn’t it? I can tell. Your aura’s gone bright magenta, lately.”

“Can you just— answer me, please, Luna. Look, I know it seems like I’m mental — ”

“You don’t seem mental to me, Harry, just a bit batty. But you’ve always been like that, and I like that about you.” Around the hinkypunk, Cho starts to draw sprigs of some sort of flower. Hollyhock, maybe. Luna looks from her handiwork on the back of Malfoy’s head and then back to Harry, considering. Then she says, in a low soft voice, “Draco did stay with Andromeda for part of the summer. But don’t tell him I told you that. It wasn’t planned, you see.”

Harry lets out a long, slow breath. Okay. There is something. He’s not completely crazy.

“Thanks, Luna,” he says. “Don’t — don’t tell him I asked.”

 

* * *

 

 _Patience. Just be patient,_ Harry tells himself at dinner, and forces himself to focus on his food and his friends and under no circumstances glance over at the Slytherin table. He’s not going to piece it all together today, if there is anything to piece together. And besides, nothing has actually happened yet.

There’s no crisis, just the threat of one, and even that is just based on dreams and phantom pains. It’s okay.

That night, Harry and Ron get geared up for tryouts in their knee pads and their quidditch uniforms. It feels strange to open the chest and put it back on. After a year chasing horcruxes and living through a literal war, quidditch feels like an era Harry grew out of, that he has no right to return to.

But the smell of grass and rich, almost buttery leather conditioner sends him right back into it. It pushes those anxious thoughts of Teddy’s dark eyes straight out of Harry’s mind. Merlin, he missed this.

Harry measures the Firebolt in his hand, feeling the balance, stroking his thumb over the smooth polished wood. It’s been battered and beaten and singed over the years, and it bears those scars like Harry’s own skin.

On the grounds that evening, the sky is a dark greenish color and the air feels cool and wet with rain. Fog creeps in from the Forbidden Forest and over the pitch. It’s so dense Harry can only see the orange glow of Hagrid’s window. It swallows the outlines of the shack entirely.

The Gryffindor team hopefuls and a handful of people come to watch make their way over the damp grass toward the field and stands. The Slytherin team, having just finished tryouts, files past on their way back into the castle.

Leading them is Graham Montague. Captain again, Harry guesses. He jeers when Harry accidentally caught his eye.

Malfoy is there behind him, looking sulky and a little too tall for his uniform. He holds the glossy black and silver broom his father bought him so many years ago clenched tight in his fingers. Harry’s a little surprised to see him there. He hadn’t been to keen on quidditch in sixth year, and who knows what happened in seventh.

The Slytherins don’t acknowledge the Gryffindors _or_ one another. They walk in a straight sullen line past the Gryffindors. The tension is thicker than the fog.

Malfoy glowers at the back of Montague’s head and doesn’t acknowledge Harry, which is irritating because he obviously knows Harry’s there. Without meaning to, Harry turns to watch his blonde head retreat toward the castle, and Ron elbows him to keep moving.

 

* * *

 

After a series of tryouts, Ron’s secured his spot as Keeper and Dean made a really brilliant tryout for a spot as a Chaser, Ron says into Harry’s ear, “You reckon Seamus will give a good shot, or d’you think we’ll have another mutiny on the horizon?”

“Merlin, I hope not,” Harry says, a little distractedly. He’s trying to focus on the team, but his thoughts keep drifting. “The Slytherins seemed weird, right? Like, tense?”

Above them, Seamus is trying for Beater. His swing is strong but a little erratic. He keeps losing his grip on the broom and regaining it just before he flies off. It’s stressful to watch. He’s not a steady as Coote was but he reckons the reckless force of Seamus’s arm might give Peakes a run for his money.

“Weirder than normal, you mean?” Ron says. Seamus makes a grandiose but miscalculated swing at the bludger hurtles toward his face. The crowd of Gryffindors below let out a collective gasp — it just misses Seamus, thank Merlin, and only barely knocks into the shoulder a first year boy on the bleachers and makes a small hole in the fabric behind him.

Dean has his hand clutched tight in the fabric of his uniform. His eyes never leave Seamus.

Harry claps and yells, “Nice flying Seamus,” then he says back to Ron, “Yeah. I don’t know, like something fishy’s going on.”

Seamus’s bat thunders against another bludger, and Ron whistles up at him. “Look. I know Malfoy’s a sore spot, especially after yesterday, but if you try to make this about him...”

“ _You_ brought him into this, not me,” Harry says, a little defensively. Then he feels guilty. He’s starting to think it really isn’t working to keep it all inside him. He almost told Ron earlier, and surely Hermione had already mentioned Harry’s scar hurting just before Potions the other day. So Harry sighs. He says, “But, honestly, mate, there’s—  something I have to tell you after tryouts.”

They watch the rest of them have a go at it, then Harry announces his picks in the locker room. Seamus scrapes his way onto the team by the skin of his teeth, and when Harry calls out his name after Ritchie Coote’s, Dean sweeps him into his arms. Seamus’s shoes lift off the floor for just a moment.

Harry feels another pang of missing Ginny when he calls Dean Thomas, Katie Bell, and Anjali Rai, a third year new to the team, as Chasers. None of them fly like her, but that’s okay.

Harry pictures Ginny standing in the crowd, but she’s wearing her Harpies uniform — deep, deep green that brings out the red of her hair, and she’s rolling her eyes at Harry.

 _On with it, then_.

After things wrap up with a solid lineup for the season, Harry lingers behind, struggling to strap the bludgers back into their trunk. Ron helps him, silently. When they’re finished, Harry leads Ron back to the Gryffindor dorm the long way, circling around to the main doors so Harry’s sure they won’t be overheard.

“So, don’t tell Hermione I told you this,” Harry begins, as they begin to walk into the thick of the fog. Harry can feel the water seeping into his trainers. “I’m going to tell her later. I already… sort of did, but I skipped over parts.”

“Go on, spit it out already.”

“I’ve been… having these dreams. They’re… about Teddy. And in the last one, I saw Lucius Malfoy in it, and he was threatening Sirius, who was holding Teddy, and he fell, and —”

“Slow down, hang on,” Ron sputters, and suddenly his expression shifts from guarded exasperation to real concern. “Teddy Lupin?”

“Yeah. And when I woke up from the one with Lucius, my scar was burning.”

Ron stops in his tracks. His mouth hangs slightly open. “That — that hasn’t happened since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named kicked it, right?”

Oh. Hermione hadn’t told him.

“I’ve had loads of nightmares since then, you know that,” — Ron snorts as Harry says this, but his eyes are wide, a little panicked — “but nothing nothing that felt like this. I wrote Andromeda yesterday, to make sure she and Teddy are alright, but…  I think Malfoy’s involved somehow, or maybe he has some kind of information… and things keep happening….” He’s rambling at this point, and Harry knows it, but he can’t stop. “Luna told me Malfoy stayed with Andromeda this summer. So he’s been in contact with Teddy.”

“But… what could Draco or Lucius Malfoy possibly want out of Teddy?”

They’re getting close to the entrance to the Great Hall. Harry opens his mouth and shuts it. He has no answer. “I — Merlin, is this all in my head?”

Ron purses his lips, and avoids Harry’s eyes. “I don’t know, mate. A lot of things that have been in your head have been real too, don't get me wrong. But not everything.”

“You think I’m going mental, don’t you.”

“I think maybe you’re having a hard time, being back here. But we all are.” He sounds like Hermione. Back in tip-toeing mode.

Harry follows him back into the castle.

That night in the common room, Harry and Ron sit down with Hermione and Crookshanks. He tells her everything as fast as he can, keeping his voice low so Lavender and Parvati — who are both ignoring their open textbooks and furiously discussing something together by the fireplace — don't overhear.

After it’s all out in the open, Hermione is stunned. But after the shock wears off, she asks him the same question. “Why Teddy? He’s just a child. Are you sure it’s not just —”

“I know, I know, I’m projecting, it’s just my own anxieties bleeding into my dreams. But my scar, Hermione. What triggered that? That’s not normal.”

“Mr— rew,” says Crookshanks. His pupils are dilated, and his yellow eyes never leave Harry’s.

“Even your bloody cat knows something’s up,” Harry says.

“But what’s the _something_ , Harry? What do you actually think is happening?”

Harry draws in a long breath. “I don’t know. But things haven’t been adding up. Like why Malfoy sold his father up the river, why he was with Andromeda…? Maybe Lucius wants Teddy for… for some reason… and Malfoy has been trying to go through Andromeda. Maybe as a way to get Lucius to forgive him for saving his own hide.”

“That doesn’t explain why it would be Teddy they’re after,” Ron says.

“I don’t know. Teddy’s different. Why did Voldemort go after me?” Harry hears his own voice rising in pitch and volume. He sounds desperate. “Malfoy spent all of Transfiguration pretending I wasn’t there but he looked right at me when McGonagall mentioned _morphamagi_.”

“Pretending you weren’t there — ” Hermione starts, her brow pinched. “Why would Malfoy acknowledge you in the first place?”  
    “He just… always does.” Harry feels himself flush. He has a brief fantasy of sticking his own head in the fireplace, but thinks it might startle Lavender and Parvati. “I know it doesn’t fit together, but there’s something there, I just haven’t figured out the connections yet.”

“It’s not —”

“I know it’s not sixth year,” Harry interrupts Ron before he can say it for the thousandth time. “I know things are different. It could be the other way around. Maybe he knows something his father’s up to, but he’s not involved, I don’t know. I’m not going to McGonagall about this right now, am I?”

Ron and Hermione stare at Harry. In the silence, he can hear his own heart beating, and Parvati and Lavender in the background, voices just audible over the crackle of fire —

“ — so she asked you to go?”

“Not just me! You too, Parvati. She asked for both of us.”

“Mrrrr— ew,” says Crookshanks, whiskers twitching. The cat stands, arches his back, and jumps from Hermione’s lap onto Harry’s. Crookshanks nuzzles his head under Harry’s hand, forcefully, and Harry gives him desperate little scratches around his ears.

Somehow, the cat’s become Harry’s closest ally.

He feels ashamed about that, to be honest.

 

* * *

 

Harry blinks the sleep out of his eyes. It’s early. Crows are cawing and swarming on the parapets of the West Tower.

“Anything?” Ron says, his voice sleep-slurred, as he pulls open the canopy of his bed.

Harry tries to conjure the stuff of his dreams last night but the last thing he remembers is trying and trying to get his neck at the right angle so it doesn’t ache. Then sunlight. Bird song.

“No,” he replies. Harry should be relieved, but instead he feels dread. Embarrassment. Worry for his own sanity.

Ron lets out a breath that might be a laugh. “Okay, mate. Keep it that way.”

 

* * *

 

Malfoy won’t stop muttering through Potions. It’s become a monologue, really, interspersed with commands. He’s breaking Harry’s concentration, which was incredibly thin to begin with.

Harry’s trying to be normal about everything. Trying hard.

“I can’t believe Slughorn has us on this bat shite. There are shortages of healing potions across the wizarding world. The more complicated ones, they can’t brew them fast enough. Madam Pomfrey’s dangerously low on skele-gro, for one.”

He looks up at Harry — who has been stirring the presently bubbling, pea soup-colored potion until his arm tingles. “What if some stupid first year like you gets themselves jellified and has to live like that for a month until the draught matures? No one really _needs_ felix felicis.”

Harry tries to stir the potion correctly, twenty, or maybe twenty-two clockwise rotations. Lower the heat. Three to the right. Raise the heat. Repeat for two and a half hours.  
    “I didn’t do that, if you remember. It was Lockhart.”

Malfoy glowers at Harry’s hand on the wooden spoon instead of responding to the insult. Either the sight of the _I must not tell lies_ scar is bringing up unpleasant memories for Malfoy too, or Harry’s stirring technique leaves something to be desired.

“And how do _you_ know they’re low on Skele-gro?” Harry says, bristling at Malfoy’s constant judgement, and his self-appointed managerial position. “Are you bothering Madame Pomfrey again?”

This touches a nerve. “I’m not _bothering_ her, Potter. If you must know, sometimes I go to the Hospital Wing. Help organize the potions, make the sheets, that sort of thing. I owe her an apology so I’m trying to give back just a little bit, Lord Potter, if that doesn’t affront your sensibilities.”

 _“She’s_ the one you owe an apology?”

Malfoy’s hackles only raise higher. “What, do you think it should be you? Always indebted to you, Potter, my savior, you great fucking narcissist?”

There’s a sputtering noise, and suddenly Slughorn is standing behind them. “God in heaven, Mr. Malloy! You’ll curdle all our kettles.”

Harry’s heart is beating loud in his ears. He’s definitely lost count of whether he should be stirring clockwise or counterclockwise. When Slughorn walks away, he leans in and hisses at Malfoy.  “I didn’t mean _me_. Try giving something back to… I don’t know, Katie Bell. Bill Weasley. Madame Rosmerta. Someone you actually hurt.”

Malfoy blanches. His voice lowers in volume, but loses none of its force. “You don’t know what I have or haven’t done, Potter. Despite what you might think, you don’t know the first thing about my life.” He holds out his hand, palm up. “The spoon. If you would.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hi this chapter gets a little bit saucy perhaps

As Harry lays in bed staring up at the light flickering through the gaps in the red velvet canopy — Ron, Dean, and Ritchie have stayed up talking about the Chudley Cannons’ new beater — he realizes that the long stretch of dreamless sleep is starting to make him question it all. But if he had another dream, things would become clearer.

In fact, it would be incredibly convenient if he would dream about Malfoy. 

Harry had spent the rest of the day after Potions fuming at Malfoy. Ron akept giving him weird looks and Hermione tried to “check-in” with him about sixty times but Harry was determined to stew and be immature and irrational in peace, without Hermione’s reasonable interjections.

As if Malfoy has any right to act like he’s so different now… Like he didn’t try to hit Harry with a cruciatus in the bathroom or send Katie to St. Mungoes for half the year or let Death Eaters into the castle. 

Sure, maybe the last of those would have happened without him, but he still did it. Even if he was coerced. Harry has no reason to trust him, and _every_ reason to mistrust him.

Harry lays on his bed and fixates on Malfoy as he tries to fall asleep. Harry _wants_ to see his face at his father’s side — just to reassure himself that he’s not going mad. Just to have an enemy he can see, an enemy he knows.

He’d been stupid to take Malfoy’s words at face value. Malfoy’s always been a snake and a coward, he’s always said what would let him wriggle out of due punishment. 

Harry is struck with a terrible urge. He fumbles for his wand and the folded parchment he stuffed in the drawer of his bedside table. 

He hasn’t used the Marauder’s map since sixth year. Unfolding the crinkled, slightly oily parchment floods him with a dreadful nostalgia. 

Harry doesn’t expect to find Malfoy in the Room of Requirement again. He doesn’t really expect to find him doing anything strange at all. Maybe the word is ‘curious.’

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” Harry whispers, too quiet for Ron to hear.

The ink blooms, comes alive. Hundreds of names scrawl across the page. _Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. Where is Draco Malfoy_?

 _Ah._ He finds Malfoy’s name next to Luna’s. The two of them are in the Astronomy Tower, alone. For a moment, Harry remembers what Ron said about Malfoy and Luna and he feels a little sick. The shifting of the ink doesn’t help. 

Their little dots move in tandem, making strange geometric patterns across the floor. It’s hypnotizing. _Are they… dancing?_

Harry watches and watches, waiting for the pattern to break, or for one of them to leave. It doesn’t happen. His eyelids grow heavy. The ink bleeds and swims, until he can no longer read Luna or Malfoy’s names.

When Harry wakes up, the map has gone blank. 

Draco Malfoy, absent from his dreams, and the parchment.

* * *

At breakfast, Harry chows through his toast as fast as possible, as Hermione and Ron plan for the S.T.A.B.S. callout meeting tonight. As soon as he’s done, he’ll go over to the Ravenclaw table and finally get into it with Luna. Ask her everything, explain everything. She’s his best chance at a non-judgemental audience. There’s a risk of what he says leaking back to Malfoy, of course, but Harry doesn’t see any other option. 

But before he’s halfway through the bread, a barn owl with smooth feathers the color of toffee lands daintily in front of his plate. The owl gives a low hoot and allows Harry to pluck the letter from her grasp.

“From Andromeda,” he reads. 

“So soon?” Hermione says, absentmindedly holding out a piece of kiwi, which the bird refuses.

“They’re carnivores, ‘Mione,” Ron says, a little groggily. “Brightest witch of our age…” 

Hermione flushes a little bit and says, defensively, “Sometimes we all do things we aren’t supposed to. Isn’t that right, Harry?”

“You don’t have to enable it, though, love.”

Harry unfolds the letter. It’s penned in almost illegibly beautiful script, and again Harry remembers that Andromeda was once a Black.

>   _Harry,_
> 
> _My regards. I’m glad to hear you decided to return to finish your education, and I appreciated your letter very much. I’m sorry we hadn’t much time to speak over the summer. I understand that a great many things were vying for your attention, and for mine as well. If I recall, we spoke mostly at a series of funerals, so I can’t help but feel we should meet again under happier circumstances._
> 
> _As for Edward, he is well. Much more vocal than when you last saw him. He’s started babbling, all the time, just like Nymphadora did. The other morning I realized, to my great shame, that I never thanked you for helping with his bottle at Nymphadora’s wake. The time was difficult for me. I hadn’t expected to become a mother again, and certainly not in the way that I did. You helped me through that day, and I am incredibly grateful._
> 
> _Edward remembers you, too. I think he misses you. I catch flickers of your face on his — he’s experimenting with his powers, little by little every day. Sometimes he looks up at me, and his eyes glint green._
> 
> _I await you next letter,_
> 
> _Andromeda Tonks_

At the bottom, beside Andromeda’s signature, is a tiny ink handprint. Entirely too small. Harry places his finger over it. His eyes are stinging, but Harry wills himself not to break down in the middle of the Great Hall. 

Teddy remembers him. Not only is he safe, he remembers Harry.

“What’s she say, Harry?” Hermione says with a note of panic in her voice. She must see Harry blinking too fast.

“They’re okay,” he says, handing her the letter. “Teddy’s alright.”

Ron shoves a forkful of egg in his mouth. “Right. Brilliant. What did I tell you, mate?”

 _Doesn’t mean something won’t happen later_ , Harry thinks. “I’m relieved, sure, but… D’you think I should say anything about what I saw?”

Ron and Hermione exchange glances. “Er—,” they say, but it doesn’t matter. Harry has already decided. 

He shoves his food aside and starts writing. Hemione and Ron try to talk him out of it. 

“Don’t — don’t worry her for no reason,” Hermione says. “She’s gone through so much.” 

“Hermione’s right. Besides, Harry, you know this sort of thing isn’t foolproof by a long shot. Remember what happened with Sirius? The Department of Mysteries?”

As if Harry would forget the battle that took Sirius from him. He spends the rest of breakfast writing. 

He pens a brief retelling of the dream, taking care not to be alarmist. _I don’t know if it means anything, though. This happens to me a lot. Its bollocks, actually, pretty often. I just thought, in case it wasn’t, I should tell you_. After that, Harry tells her that he misses Teddy too, that he would love to see them both soon. And then his hand runs away and before his thinking brain catches up he’s written:

> _I heard Malfoy stayed with you over the summer. Never thought you’d let your stuck-up sister’s Death Eater son into your house willingly. What happened?_

But it’s rude, and aggressive, and he has a feeling Andromeda wouldn’t take kindly to that kind of deeply personal prodding, so he scratches it out so hard he tears a tiny hole in the page, and keeps writing.

As Harry finishes and folds up the letter, he finds himself thinking back to the summer. He cannot believe Malfoy was there in that house with his godson the whole time and he never heard about it. Andromeda must not have told Arthur or Molly, which is strange. Harry knows for a fact that they’d taken tea together at Andromeda’s house on several occasions throughout the summer. Did she time it so Malfoy wasn’t there? Did she tell him not to leave his room when company was over? 

And beyond that… Had Malfoy held Teddy? Did he feed Teddy snacks? Help change his diapers? Did Malfoy call Andromeda ‘Auntie?’

When Harry tries to picture it, he can’t. It’s too surreal. 

* * *

During free period, Harry heads toward West Tower, to the Owlery. No incidents, Malfoy or otherwise, in his morning classes. He’s hungry from skipping breakfast to write the letter — his stomach had been growling all through Transfiguration, but then it gave up and resigned itself to emptiness. The hunger isn’t helping Harry’s mood — he’s irritable and a little shaky. But he’ll eat when the letter is safely on its way to Andromeda.

Harry cuts through the courtyard on his way out of the castle. A voice rings against the archways drizzling with afternoon rain. 

“Parvati! Parvati, wait!”

Harry stops in his tracks. Parvati stumbles past him, bringing with her a cloud of what smells like earl grey and sandalwood. Lavender is on her heels. Their trainers slip and rasp against the wet stone under them. 

“Parvati!” Lavender calls again. She catches Parvati by the wrist just before the courtyard opens up to the grounds. Parvati tries to wrest her arm away. She’s gasping for breath.

“I’m here with you. Just please, please stop—” 

Parvati keeps tugging and whimpering, until she’s backed herself against a wall. Harry sees then that Parvati’s face has gone ashen. Her lips are bloodless. Tears plaster long strands of black hair to her cheeks.

Lavender takes Parvati’s face in her hands. Brushes the hair away from her face. 

“Just— try to breathe. It’ll be alright, Parvati, she promised.” But Lavender’s voice shakes. She brings the sleeve of her robe up to wipe Parvati’s cheeks. 

Harry doesn’t know what’s wrong, who _she_ is or what exactly the promise was about. Right now he feels like an intruder, and he’s got a letter to send. Harry takes a step toward the way out of the courtyard. 

Lavender and Parvati startle, as if they just became aware of his presence. The look Lavender shoots him over her shoulder — flared eyes, locked jaw, _Give us some bloody privacy_ — is downright frightening. Especially with the still-healing scars that run across her face. Lavender is a far cry from the girl who cried _Won-Won_ now. 

“Er— sorry, I’ll just be on my way,” he sputters, and nearly sprints for the footpath that winds, serpentine, toward West tower.

* * *

Harry approaches the damp, owl-shit smelling building, feeling too hungry and tired to really think about what could have happened to Parvati, and all of it together blinds him to who else is there.

A tall, thin figure leans against the wall with his knee bent to use as a writing surface. His hair drips dots on the stone and sends streams running down his nose. He’s hunched over a piece of parchment. Malfoy has already folded it into thirds and stuffed it into an envelope. 

“Inprimo sigillum,” he says, around the quill in his mouth, and a black seal appears on the letter, marked with the initials: _D.M_.

He does not look up at Harry’s footsteps, but when he hears them, he tucks the letter into the pocket of his cloak. He turns halfway to Harry, gives him a lazy sidelong glance. 

“Oh. Morning, Potter,” he says. “ I know you’re absolutely _desperate_ for my company, but honestly, you may want to talk to someone about this. It’s getting embarrassing.”

Unhelpfully, Harry’s mind flashes back to last night with the map, and Harry feels his face heat. Too close to home. Harry pats his pocket, where he’s stuffed Andromeda’s letter. “I’m not here for you, prick, believe it or not.”

Malfoy quirks his eyebrows. “No small talk today, Potter? Ran out of inane questions? Not even willing to pontificate on how I might best walk my path toward redemption?”

“Who’s that letter for?” Harry says, grinding his teeth.

“This may astound you, Potter, but it is, in fact, none of your business who I mail.”

“I’m asking you a simple question, Malfoy. Just give me an answer.”

“Yeah? Or what? You’ll slice me open?”

That does it. 

“Accio letter,” Harry says.

A part of him really just wants to provoke Malfoy. He’s always had a way of snitching on himself under enough pressure. Harry’s mind flickers back to the Astronomy Tower. Dumbledore, poisoned, disarmed, at Malfoy’s mercy, but it had been Malfoy who tripped over himself to confess, as if he were the one held at wandpoint.

There’s a flash of fury on Malfoy’s face, as the letter flies in an arc toward Harry. But Malfoy’s Seeker instincts kick in. He plucks it right out of the air. 

Harry grits his teeth. The Hermione in his head is telling him, _Don’t be an idiot, back off_. But he feels like he’s on the precipice of something. Like he’s moving closer to understanding why he’s going mad all of a sudden. 

Harry remembers how easy it had been to disarm Malfoy at the Manor— how Malfoy barely fought as Harry pried the wand that would later kill Voldemort right out of his fingers. No magic, just force. 

So Harry tunes out his internalized Hermione-voice and snatches the envelope right back out between Malfoy’s fingers. He only catches a glimpse the outside of the envelope — _ANDROMEDA TONKS —_ before there is a flash of red light. 

Harry staggers backward, and catches himself against the wall. He drops the letter. The owls shriek and scatter out into the wet grey sky. A handful of feathers and little golden bits of straw float down around Malfoy. 

Through the window, Harry can hear faint voices. What was that? Did you hear that? A fight I reckon. Already? Merlin. It’s the first week of classes. With the scrolls McGonagall’s giving us, who’s got time for fighting?

Malfy’s wand hand trembles. He kneels to pick the letter out of the hay-and-droppings mess on the floor, but keeps his wand up and doesn’t break eye contact with Harry. 

“Potter, you— you freak. You think you always have the right to pry, pry, pry—”

Harry staggers to his feet and raises his wand and shouts, “Expelliarmus!” 

Malfoy’s wand flies into his hand. The feel of the wood tells Harry it is, indeed, the one he remembers. Arthur Weasley advised him to give it back, after it became clear Malfoy wouldn’t be going to Azkaban. To head off any retribution, he said. So Harry sent an owl with a note that said _Here,_ and garnered no response. The dark elm is warm in Harry’s hand.

Malfoy stares at him. His ears have gone red, and for a second, his mouth falls open in a less-than-dignified ‘o.’

Then he shakes himself. “Perfect Potter, above consequences —” Malfoy lunges for Harry, prying at his fingers, bending them backwards. “Savior Potter can do whatever he wants, because he’s the Hero—” 

Harry struggles against Malfoy’s hands. “Get off me!”

“You took my fucking wand, Potter. The first time wasn’t—” he jabs his pointy elbow into Harry’s side “—enough for you?!”

“Just give me the bloody letter.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I definitely  will, because you asked so nicely—” 

“I know you have something to do with what’s happening to me,” Harry explodes. The desperation he hears in his own voice catches Harry off guard.

Malfoy takes advantage of the slight hesitation and rips the wand from Harry’s hand. He was holding onto it so tight that its sudden removal leaves his palm stinging. Malfoy uses his forward momentum to push Harry’s shoulders flush against the stone wall. With his other hand, he jabs the tip of his wand into Harry’s beating jugular. 

“What. Is. Wrong. With. You.”

“The dreams. My scar. I don’t know, something,” Harry croaks. “Something’s wrong with me.” The adrenaline hums in Harry’s veins. He’s drunk on it. “I had a dream about your father.”

“My father.” Malfoy’s voice goes deadly soft. “My father. Merlin, Potter, you really have lost it completely.”

_Tap. Tap. TAP._

The sound of the footsteps. Malfoy doesn’t move. His eyes glitter in the low light. Again, they are wild. The pressure on Harry’s throat is making it hard for him to breathe. 

“Drop your wands,” calls a voice, as the footsteps grow louder. “I’m a Prefect!” 

Some Hufflepuff sixth year rounds the corner into the Owlery. She flashes her little yellow and silver badge. “Come with me willingly, or I’ll levitate your petrified bodies all the way to McGon— Oh, fuck, you’re Harry Potter,” she says, then shakes herself. “But still! No exceptions.”

Malfoy gives her a withering look, and presses the tip of his wand in harder. Harry can feel his adam’s apple twitching as he tries to breathe. Then, after that last surge of pressure, Malfoy lets his arm fall, and Harry can breathe again. 

“Next time, Potter, try speaking to me with words. Like a human.”

 _That’s rich coming from you_ , Harry thinks, as the Prefect starts to lead them to the Headmaster’s office.

* * *

“So. Who would care to explain to me exactly what happened?”

Malfoy and Harry sit in front of McGonagall, their heads bowed. Harry’s neck is still sore, and instead of looking at Malfoy or making eye contact with McGonagall, he rubs the place where Malfoy wand tore it raw, over, and over, and over. 

McGonagall waits with steely patience for an answer. She told the Prefect, Annabel Entwhistle, to get lost. They would be speaking privately, she told Entwhistle — who had the nerve to look put out — the three of them. And here they are. Her hands tap, one, two, three, four, on the broad, claw-footed desk. It’s too quiet in the office without all of Dumbledore’s clicking, spinning, smoke-spewing devices. 

Around them, the painted Headmasters sleep. Harry can’t bear to look at the portrait hung on the wall behind the desk, and Malfoy seems to be avoiding looking at it too. Dumbledore, slumped in his chair, nodding off. McGonagall’s pointed hat half-eclipses his body. Is he pretending to sleep like the rest of them? Or is he listening? 

Harry hasn’t been here since the night he came back, the night he went into the forest to die. To come and speak with the portrait of Dumbledore on a night of such finality, and then to return like this, for a scolding, earned by fighting Draco Malfoy of all things… 

“I didn’t—” Harry starts, and at the same time Malfoy says, “It wasn’t—”

They exchange a glare.

“One at a time,” McGonagall says, sharply.

“Boys these days… I tell you…” mutters the portrait of Amrose Swott, shaking his pointed ginger beard. “All bickering, no studying. Utterly disgraceful.”

“We had a little spat, Headmaster,” Malfoy drawls, “then a Prefect caught us, and now we’re here.”

Harry looks at Malfoy, stunned. Malfoy isn’t going to sell him up the river, apparently, which is pretty stunning considering the amount of dirt he has. Harry isn’t too pigheaded to realize now, to his great shame and horror, that he did corner Malfoy in the Owlery and cast the first spell and, Merlin, what is he going to say to Hermione and Ron about this?

But maybe he’s just being calculating. As long as Malfoy’s in Harry’s debt, they’ll never be on equal footing. As long as Malfoy’s indebted to Harry, he’ll never have the upper hand. 

Shadows from the flickering orange light of the office pool under McGonagall’s eyes and in the creases of her skin. “I would have thought that the both of you had matured beyond this. That you might have learned something from incident of sixth year, if nothing else.”

When neither of them answer her, McGonagall presses two fingers to her temple. Harry finds his gaze wandering back to the portrait of his old Headmaster. For a moment, he thinks he sees Dumbledore smirk in his sleep. 

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall says, “I expect much more from you. You’re an adult now. Act like one. Don't endanger your chances of joining the Auror Office over a childish grudge. And you, Mr. Malfoy, after the harm you inflicted on this school, I might suggest you don’t squander the _incredibly_ generous second chance you’ve been offered.”

Malfoy’s ears are pink again, and he keeps his eyes fixed on his hands, which are knitted together in his lap. His thumbs circle around and around one another. He says, “Yes, Headmaster.”

“I— I’m the one who started it, Professor,” Harry says. If he lets Malfoy take the fall for this, well… Harry’s pride is already down to the dregs. He has very little left of it to lose.

McGonagall raises her eyebrows. Something about the expression seems feigned. “Is that true, Mr. Malfoy?”

“That’s… a subjective question, Headmaster.”

“Then give me a subjective answer.” 

Malfoy hesitates a full five seconds. Then, he sighs. “As they say, Headmaster, it takes two to tango.”

McGonagall squints at Malfoy, then looks back to Harry, who tried very hard not to snort and did it almost-successfully. “Whether or not you initiated the squabble, Mr. Potter, the question is, why did it happen?”

Harry can’t broach the topic of the dreams, not here. His ego can’t bear a repeat of the I Just Know disaster. He just wants to get out of this room, to go somewhere McGonagall and Dumbledore can’t hear just how far off the deep end Harry’s gone.

So the answer he gives is, “...Habit?” 

McGonagall laces her fingers together. “I’m going to have to deduct twenty five points from both Slytherin and Gryffindor. In addition, I’m giving you detention— separate detention— for a week. Don’t let me catch any more childish behavior from either of you again.” 

“Yes, Headmistress,” they say, in unison.

* * *

 Harry sulks down the spiral staircase after Malfoy in mortified silence. Malfoy doesn’t speak either. He stares straight ahead. After this, Harry has every intention of booking it back to the common room and skipping the rest of his classes that evening. 

But before he makes it two steps down the hallway, Malfoy catches him by the arm. “Not so fast, Potter. You and I are going to have a chat.”

“I’m late for class,” Harry says, which is true, but irrelevant to him.

“Sorry. I don’t care.” Malfoy circles around to block his path. “The dream you mentioned earlier. Was I in it?”

Their voices echo against the stone archways of the corridor. The rain’s slowed to a trickle, but the wind is strong, and Harry can feel tiny cool drops of water on his skin. He feels vulnerable, incredibly, uncomfortably vulnerable talking about this out in the open, to Draco Malfoy of all people. 

Harry tries to deflect. “Who’s the narcissist now, prick?” 

“I’m trying,” Malfoy says, his voice high with anger, “to ascertain _why_ you woke up this morning and decided it was your duty to steal my personal property. Is that too much to ask?”

“Yes,” Harry says, and tries to push past Malfoy.

Malfoy catches him by the elbow. “Merlin, for once in your life, listen. ” As Malfoy’s fingers lock hard on Harry’s arm, his eyes are frighteningly intent. “Potter. Do you ever think about how that mess in the bathroom could have gone differently? Because I do.”

This catches Harry off guard. His throat goes tight, unhelpfully. Malfoy trying to manipulate him. And it almost works. But Harry yanks his arm away and takes a step backward. 

“Maybe,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter.” 

“It does matter. I know you’ve been locked away for a very long time now, Potter, so I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a little something called ‘learning from your mistakes.’ You might want to look into it. I’ll ask you once more,” Malfoy says, enunciating every syllable, “Was I in your dream?”

“No. Just your father,” Harry says, and inches back further. But Malfoy follows.

“Just my father. And yet you came after _me_. You— you thought I was writing him, didn’t you?” Malfoy laughs bitterly. “You’re more of an idiot than I thought. My father and I don't talk so much anymore.”

“Because he’s in Azkaban, or because you betrayed him?” 

“Yes.” Malfoy smiles. 

Harry realizes just now that Malfoy’s let go of his arm. The pressure is gone, and the warmth. Harry could leave. But he can’t stop himself from asking,“Why did you do it?” 

“That’s a very, _very_ big question. You give me an answer as to why you thought dreaming about my father gave you the right to attack me, and maybe I'll tell you why.” 

“I already told you,” Harry says, trying to act impatient and a little bit blasé, when really his heart is pounding. “I get carried away, I’m an idiot, et cetera. I mostly got freaked out because my scar hurt when I woke up. But Hermione thinks it's just like… a phantom pain from Voldemort.” 

Malfoy winces at the name. 

This is way more information than he intended to give, but he’s already gone this far, so why not? So Harry doesn’t stop himself. “Your father was there, and he pressed his cane against Sirius’s neck, and that’s all.”

“Oh, lovely, now I understand why you accosted me. Not.” Malfoy narrows his eyes.  Then something dawns on him. “Why were you were asking me about my aunt in Potions?”

Harry is not about to explain his bullshit again. “That’s unrelated,” he lies. “It was just... I heard that you'd stayed with Andromeda and I wondered why.” 

Shit. He should not have said this. Malfoy’s eyes go wide.

“Who told you that? Was it Luna? It’d have to be Luna.” Malfoy’s starting to sound a little hysterical.

“Don’t — I didn’t say that,” Harry flounders. “I just heard it. You know. Around.”

“Bloody hell, she said she wouldn't go blabbering about it... Merlin, that girl can be _so_ —  I wanted to keep everything out of the Prophet…” He’s talking to himself more than Harry at this point.

“I haven't told anyone else.” 

Malfoy takes another step closer. “Why in the world were you bothering Luna about my private life, Potter?” 

“I was... I — I don’t know. I guess I felt guilty about... the trial.” It’s the first thing that pops into his head, and mostly a lie. Not even a good lie. “I guess I wanted to know if I made the right choice.” 

“I didn’t want you there anyway,” Malfoy spits. “Merlin.” 

“It seems like you did fine without me, anyway.” 

Malfoy clicks his tongue, and looks away, scowling. “Yes, delightfully, thank you.” 

“Are you going to answer me? I’ve told you everything.” 

“I don't believe you have told me _everything_ , Potter. But I didn't think you would, anyway.”  Malfoy crosses his arms over his chest, and takes a long breath. “After the war, the first thing Dear Father did was buy us the most expensive attorney in Wizarding Britain. They were angling for house arrest. That’s the lightest sentence they thought we could get. And I… couldn't be stuck in that place, with them. I couldn’t.”

A shoulder brushes into Harry’s. Voices begin to fill the hall, a pair of Ravenclaws gossiping about how Peeves snuck U-No-Poo into Professor Flitwick's cider last night, a group of first years complaining about the staircases, and a Slytherin boy with red Spectrespecs chasing after his little white rat. Class must have just let out. 

Malfoy seems as startled as Harry is. “I —” he starts to say, then shakes his head. “I told you more than enough already. I’ve got to get to Herbology.” 

Harry watches the back of Malfoy’s head disappear into the crowd. He feels... he doesn't know what he feels.

Briefly, he’s seized by the impulse to yell after Malfoy. Something stupid like, _We’ll talk in Potions_. 

But Harry's humiliated himself enough today. So he bites his tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the mess, i'm writing this as i go, and i appreciate yall for bearing with me. however i do have a map and i know where i'm going, i'm just not sure how exactly i'll get there - but thats where the fun is!
> 
> i think i might change the title because i'm not sure how relevant it is anymore! the themes have veered in a Different direction!! but we will See


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